


Through The Looking Glass

by AngelDesaray



Category: Shingeki no Kyojin | Attack on Titan
Genre: (Not with Levi), Abusive Relationships, Aftermath of Torture, Aftermath of Violence, Alternate Universe - Childhood Friends, Angst, Angst and Feels, Angst and Hurt/Comfort, Angst and Romance, Blood and Gore, Blood and Injury, Blood and Torture, Blood and Violence, Bullying, Canon Levi, Canonical Character Death, Childhood Friends, Childhood Memories, Childhood Trauma, Cross-Posted on Tumblr, Dehydration, Different Worlds, Domestic Fluff, Emotional Hurt/Comfort, Eventual Romance, F/M, Feels, Fluff, Fluff and Angst, Fluff and Hurt/Comfort, Heavy Angst, Hurt/Comfort, Implied Bullying, Implied Sexual Content, Implied/Referenced Rape/Non-con, Implied/Referenced Torture, Injury, Isolation, Language, Levi needs hugs, Light Angst, Mentions of Death, Mentions of Starvation, Minor Character Death, Near Death, Near Death Experiences, Non-Graphic Rape/Non-Con, Original Character(s), POV Alternating, POV Levi (Shingeki no Kyojin), POV Multiple, POV reader, Protective Levi (Shingeki no Kyojin), Psychological Trauma, Romance, Romantic Fluff, Slow Burn, Soft Levi (Shingeki no Kyojin), Starvation, Strained Relationships, Tags Contain Spoilers, Threats of Rape/Non-Con, Threats of Violence, Torture, Trauma, Violence, but I will not be writing it explicitly, for the concerned the rape/non-con is not going to be blatantly written, its going to be heavily implied so its clear that's what's happening, mentions of bullying, modern reader
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-03-15
Updated: 2021-02-24
Packaged: 2021-03-01 03:53:06
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, No Archive Warnings Apply, Rape/Non-Con
Chapters: 10
Words: 69,472
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23158843
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/AngelDesaray/pseuds/AngelDesaray
Summary: A boy and a girl.  One’s lived life growing up in the dark underworld of a cruel and unrelenting world, and the other, while living in a world of modern comforts, has been tested in more unseen ways.  Despite being from two entirely different worlds, time and space itself seems to bend to bring them together.  Starting with a chance meeting in their tender youth, their lives weave together across entire universes, tethered together in ways they’re only beginning to discover.“Love takes off masks that we fear we cannot live without and know we cannot live within.” –James Baldwin“Love is like a friendship caught on fire.  In the beginning a flame, very pretty, often hot and fierce, but still only light and flickering.  As love grows older, our hearts mature and our love becomes as coals, deep burning and unquenchable.”  –Bruce Lee
Relationships: Levi/Reader
Comments: 32
Kudos: 137





	1. Soft And Warm

**Author's Note:**

> Like Survive Or Live, this is being posted regularly on TUMBLR as well as on here, so I'm sorry to say that, as Tumblr works from yours truly, there's no set writing schedule, and chapters are occasionally being postponed in favor of other tumblr works/requests. However, this is so far my most popular, so you're probably going to see fairly regular updates with this story.

_***Levi’s POV*** _

At first, Levi thought he’d gone blind.

He had been in that same small, dark room, watching everything he knew and cared about wasting away until all that was left to shrivel and die was himself. Just as he thought he would die next, forgotten in the corner of the same room his mother had died, the world around him suddenly turned bright–too bright. It was like he had stared directly into a large fire until his sight was burned away, the intensity surprisingly unmatched by the sharp contrast in scent that hit him next. It was…clean, cleaner than anything he’d ever experienced. There wasn’t a whiff of decay or rot, of waste or sweat in the air. Just freshness, something floral, something…pure? He had no words for it, so alien was the sensation for him.

With a raspy hiss, Levi tried to cover his eyes with his hands, curling into himself as he tried to adjust, to figure out what was happening to him.

A high pitched squeak directly above him made Levi look up sharply, wide eyes blinking and squinting against the bright light to see what was above him. Gradually, as the light adjusted above him, what came into view was the face of a little girl, staring at him with equally wide eyes over the edge of the foot of the bed. The two stared at each other for a moment that seemed to stretch forever before Levi broke the tension.

Not knowing who the girl was, where _he_ was, or why it was so bright and clean, or what brought him here, Levi tried to get away, pushing weakly against a soft surface that seemed to give and shift slightly under his hands and feet. What was this?

“Wait!” the girl said, her head peeking further over the edge as she stared at him. Levi froze, one hand hovering over the soft covering over the floor. Was it…a really large rug?

“Are you hungry?”

Levi stared at her. Was he…of course he was hungry, wasn’t she looking at him? Couldn’t she _see_?

She bounded off the bed so suddenly, Levi scrambled back again, his back pressing against the wall. She seemed to be oblivious to his discomfort and alarm, bouncing in her steps towards the room’s door.

“I know how to make mac n’ cheese, my mom just made rolls, and–Stay here, I’ll bring food.”

And just like that, she had disappeared out the door. No other kind of explanation, just a quickly spoken order…that he was not going to follow.

Getting up on shaky legs, Levi left the room with a second thought, finding himself in a dim hallway next to a flight of stairs he started to carefully make his way down, clinging to the wooden railing for stability along the way. He was hoping to figure out where he was, and then…then…

What did he do, then? He didn’t have anywhere to go. His mother was dead. No one else cared about him, there was nowhere he could go for help, he was too weak to do anything himself. Why was he even bothering to move if there was nothing left for him to do but waste away and die?

Letting go of the railing, Levi dropped onto the bottom step, leaning against the stairwell wall with his eyes cast down, gazing at nothing except the dark green rug that even covered the stairs.

A sudden clunking sound and a muffled shout caused Levi’s head to jerk back up instinctually, turning towards the source of the sound and peering past the edge of the stairwell to see the girl on her knees on a countertop, a cabinet door open and some kind of container trapped between the wooden side of the counter and the girl’s hand. She had a roll of bread stuffed in her mouth, which was why her shout had been muffled, and she was leaning back down to set the container back on the counter top, too focused on what she was doing to realize she had an audience.

Curious, Levi got back up, keeping close to the wall and trying to stay out of sight as he watched the girl stretch to reach a small box on the top shelf of the open cabinet, fingers straining upwards and gradually coaxing the small box into her hand. Once the small box and the container she’d almost dropped were on the counter, she shut the cabinet and slid–still on her knees–down to the other end of the counter, opening another overhead cabinet and adding two glass cups and a shiny bowl to her collection before finally hopping down off of the counter.

She turned, bread roll still stuffed in her mouth but looking smaller like she’d been nibbling on it this entire time, and paused when she saw Levi, who froze in place. She pouted like she was about to complain that he’d left the room, but then seemed to change her mind, reaching for something he couldn’t see on the other side of a silvery box and coming back with another roll in her hand. She offered it to Levi, hand stretched out between them.

“Here.” When he didn’t immediately take it, she waved it at him. “ _Here_. It’s for you. It’ll take a few minutes for the mac n’ cheese, so you should–”

She cut off as Levi snatched the bread roll from her hand, tearing into it without any further hesitation, scarfing it down so fast he barely had time to register the fact it was still warm, buttery on the bottom, the slightest hint of flour on top. And suddenly the pain in his stomach became much more real, ravenous and demanding more.

She blinked in surprise at him, then grabbed another roll, which Levi scarfed down just as quickly. “You’re really hungry.” Levi ignored her obvious statement, eyeing her as she kicked a step stool over towards her to get back up on the counter. This time she was getting a small clear bowl, and she almost dropped it, a sharp squeak escaping her before she caught it midair on reflex, sliding off the counter in relief and setting down her chewed on roll before she started trying to open the large container she’d almost dropped earlier.

“My mom says not to eat too fast or you’ll get a tummy ache,” she said as she struggled to open it, nearly falling to the side when the lid finally gave. She started pouring its contents into the small clear bowl, still talking even though Levi hadn’t said a word so far. “Maybe these will help–You can’t eat ‘em fast cause they’re…um…well, they’re nuts. Who eats salty nuts fast?”

Why would he care about any of that? What was a stomach ache compared to the hunger he’d been suffering from?

After handing him the little bowl now filled with nuts–some he didn’t even recognize–she passed him to open a large white box that he was standing near, a gust of cold air making him shiver and back away. It didn’t last long, though, because once she had what she wanted–a jug of what he thought might be milk, though he’d never seen it in a container like that–she kicked the door shut behind her, and the cold air disappeared as quickly as it had reached him.

As the girl started pouring milk for the both of them, Levi started in on the bowl of nuts–quickly at first, but soon slowed down just like the girl had said as the salty and dry nuts made it harder and harder to eat them in large doses. When he coughed after trying to swallow a handful with difficulty, the girl offered him one of the cups of milk, the glass cool to the touch, and the cold milk was refreshing, soothing parched lips and a dry mouth, helping the salty nuts go down easier. He finished the first glass without stopping, and the girl simply pushed her untouched glass towards him when he was done, kicking around the step stool again as she tried to look into a pan that was on…another counter? It looked different from the rest, and there was steam coming out of the pan, so was it some kind of oven? Where was the fire?

Levi stayed where he was, finishing his milk and nuts while he watched the girl open the smaller box from earlier and pour its contents into the pan, causing steam to billow into the air. He continued to watch her in silence as she stirred whatever she’d poured into the pan, shuffled over to another spot on the counter to drain the steaming water into a basin, grabbed the milk to add a splash into the pan, poured some kind of orange powdery stuff inside, and added a small chunk of butter before mixing it all together, her tongue sticking out and working side to side as she stirred. After a few minutes of this, she turned the pan and emptied its goopy orange contents into the shiny bowl she’d grabbed earlier, putting the now empty pan and the rest of their accumulated dishes into the sink before grabbing the bowl and a fork from inside one of the drawers.

“There–mac n’ cheese,” she said cheerfully, offering the still-steaming bowl to him.

He reached out to take it, eyes wide at how much was in the bowl, but pulled sharply back with a hiss when he felt the heat of the bottom of the bowl burn his fingers. He’d expected the bowl to be warm, but not that _hot_.

“Oh, sorry. I’m used to it hot,” she apologized, reaching over and grabbing a towel off the counter to wad up underneath the bowl before she offered it to him again. “Better?” she asked after he’d taken it from her. He gave a small nod, watching the steam rising from the bowl. If it was too hot for him to touch, he doubted he’d be able to eat it without burning his mouth.

His stomach twisted painfully again, the smell of…of the mac n’ cheese, as she’d called it, wafting into his nose and promptly swaying him to try eating it anyway.

The first spoonful was hot, but not as bad as he thought it was going to be. Even if he’d never heard of mac n’ cheese before, it tasted good. It warmed him all the way through while he ate, gooey but not mushy, and surprisingly filling for how the girl had made it seem simple to make. Still, Levi ate every last bite, feeling warm and full for the first time in a long time.

The girl sat quietly across from him the whole time, simply watching him eat while she nibbled on the same roll she’d had stuffed in her mouth when he came down the stairs. Considering she’d been talking at him since she’d seen him, her silence was almost unnerving, and as he neared the last few bites of the mac n’ cheese she’d made him, he started watching her, seeing if she was going to do something else or speak up.

Popping the last morsel of her roll into her mouth when he was finally finished, she leaned forward, palms planted firmly on the ground in front of her and staring at him intently, studying him.

“Do you talk?” she asked finally.

“Yeah,” he replied, eyebrows crinkling together in confusion and his throat sore from disuse. Why wouldn’t he talk?

She leaned back in surprise. “Oh, you do. Good!” she said with a firm nod. “I’m Y/N.”

“Levi.”

The girl’s head tilted to the side, still looking at him curiously. “Where d–”

The sound of a door opening in another room, followed by the sound of a woman’s voice calling out her name. She jumped with a squeak, taking the bowl from Levi and ushering him behind her, towards a door that was to the right of the kitchen.

“Hide! Over–out–there!” Y/N said quickly and quietly, giving him light pushes towards the door before she put the bowl in the sink. Not knowing why he was supposed to be hiding but knowing better than to waste time asking why, Levi stumbled over to the door, legs still shaky, opening the door and sliding through once it was cracked open, shutting it quickly behind him.

He stood facing the door, hands still on the knob as he listened to what was happening on the other side.

“What are you doing in here?” came the woman’s voice, slightly muffled through the door.

“I got hungry, so I made mac n’ cheese,” Y/N said guiltily.

“It’s almost dinner time, you should have waited!”

“I was _really_ hungry.”

“Well, if you already ate, I guess that means you won’t need dinner tonight. And you better do those dishes, right now.”

“Yes, Mom.”

At that point, Levi turned around to see what room he was hiding in, squinting in surprise at how much brighter it was out here, as well as warmer, and there was a different kind of fresh smell–the earthy smell was familiar to him, but this one wasn’t necessarily…dirty.

It looked like he was in an indoor porch, windows wrapping around the three walls in front of and on either side of him, finally letting Levi see what was outside the house he’d found himself in. There were no candles or lanterns on the porch, all the ruddy light seemed to be filtering in through the windows, and outside the porch…

Carefully, Levi made his way to the second door, pulling down on the slender handle to open the lighter feeling door–one that wasn’t made of wood, he noticed in passing–and stepping out into the light. He had to squint again, a hand raising to shield his eyes as his bare feet found purchase one stone step, another…and then the tickle of soft green blades of grass and cool dirt against his feet, toes wiggling experimentally through the grass while his head tilted upwards.

There wasn’t a ceiling. There were thick and thin trees with branches reaching high above him, their leaves blocking part of his view of the sky that blended from blue to purple, from orange to red in colors he hadn’t known the world around him could make. He tried to take a few more steps to get out from under the trees and look at the open sky, but his legs gave out under him, palms burying in the grass in front of him and fingers digging into the earth.

Was this…the surface? Had he fallen asleep and somehow ended up above ground? Was this what was lying just above that dark ceiling all his life?

A soft breeze passed him, rustling the tangled mess that was his hair and the too-large shirt that hardly did anything to protect from a chill, but the breeze felt good in contrast to the warm air. Levi simply sat on the ground and listened, hearing birds chirp, leaves rustling, bugs making a buzz of different noises, wide eyes fixated on what he could see of a color changing sky above him once he’d adjusted to the light.

He didn’t move until the smack of the door being roughly pushed open caught his attention, head turning to see Y/N coming out the front door with a bundle of blankets wrapped around her shoulders, arm, and most of her head, leg kicking a stray strand up into the air to catch on her arms as she waddled out the door. She didn’t head towards him, but instead approached a miniature, plain wooden house Levi had failed to notice tucked by one of the trees. It looked hardly big enough to have one tiny room that fit both of them, and he wondered what the point of such a tiny house was. It had a little porch, windows, doors, and everything, even some sad-looking flowers in a flower box under its two tiny windows. As he watched, Y/N managed to get the door open, sticking her upper half inside but keeping her feet firmly planted on the porch as she dropped the pile of blankets into the house, reappearing with her hair poofy and frazzled from having the blankets wrapped around her head. She was also blushing as she looked at Levi, brushing hair out of her face.

“You can’t hide in my room so I brought stuff out here for you,” she said sheepishly. “I’ll be back!”

With that, she had disappeared again. Levi watched her go back and forth between the little house and the big house, bringing far more blankets than he’d ever seen one person own and even some very plush looking pillows–at least to him. Then, on the last trip, she brought out a slender bottle, one last pillow, and a stuffed bear, kicking off her shoes on the little porch before disappearing inside for several long minutes.

Finally, her head poked out the door, gaze fixed on him. “Okay, it’s ready! Get in here!”

Levi hesitated, thinking of all the clean blankets she carried out with care to avoid letting them drag along the ground and the fact she’s kicked off her shoes before slipping inside, looking down at his own filthy state.

She huffed, coming over to him with nearly pranced movements as she tiptoes in her socks over to him, wrapping a hand in his own without any hesitation and pulling him up onto his feet. “Come _on_ , before my mom sees us!” She seemed a little surprised when Levi stumbled into her, but she simply steadied him and kept dragging him confidently forward. “I brought all the spare blankets I could find and as many pillows my mom won’t notice missing.”

She ducked inside the little house, pulling him inside close behind her, hand still wrapped around his own. Once inside, instead of being met with a hard wooden floor, he found himself surrounded by soft warmth. She had covered every inch of the inside floor of the little house with blankets, pillows, and then more blankets, enough so that he didn’t really feel the hard floor beneath him, just the soft, fluffy fabrics. He felt a stab of guilt when his dirty feet left a smeared stain on one of the lighter blankets, but Y/N didn’t seem to mind, crawling out of his way with a very pleased smile on her face, looking like she was going to bounce out of her skin as she watched his reaction.

“I brought water in case you get thirsty, this blanket is to cover up when it’s bedtime, and this,” she added, pointing towards the three slender bottles sitting in one of the corners and a rather large and extremely fluffy blanket respectively, before she shyly produced the stuffed bear he’d seen her bring out earlier, stretching out to offer the stuffed toy to him. “This is Tuff–my daddy sent him from where he’s away fighting bad people. He helps me feel better, and I thought he might do the same for you,” she said, her face turning a bright red.

Levi took the bear carefully from her, thumbs running across the soft, fake fur and noting the unfamiliar flag stitched onto its arm and the heart stitched onto its chest. He wasn’t entirely sure if she _really_ wanted him to have it, but she hadn’t yanked it back out of his hands yet, so he figured so far it was okay for him to be holding the toy.

Placing the bear in his lap, his grip tightened slightly on the stuffed animal. “Why are you being so nice to me?” he asked quietly, voice still scratchy.

Y/N’s head tilted to the side in confusion. “Why wouldn’t I?”

“Y/N!” the woman’s voice faintly called from the main house, interrupting the brief silence that had followed Y/N’s answer. She scrambled to her feet at her mother’s call, hitting her head on the lower part of the roof with a sharp ‘ow’ and rubbing her head.

“I have to go!” she said, trying not to trip on the blankets as she scrambled for the door. “I’ll see you in the morning!”

Just like that, she was gone, leaving Levi alone in the little house, watching through one of the windows as she ran back into her big house, shoes in hand instead of on her feet.

Once she was out of sight, Levi turned his attention back to the tiny house, eyeing the bottles of water in the corner. It took him a few moments to unscrew the lid–which was on tighter than he was expecting it to be–and he only drank half of the first bottle for now, but the cool water was just as refreshing, if not more so, than the milk he’d had earlier.

Y/N had said she wouldn’t be back until the morning, so…all that was left for him to do was to sleep, right?

Laying down on the blankets and pulling the one she’d pointed out earlier, the bear tucked against him in his arms, he found himself cocooned in soft warmth that seemed to seep into his very bones. He snuggled deeper into his fluffy surroundings, eyes heavy with a sudden exhaustion as he squeezed the bear closer to him–something that he did get an odd sort of comfort from doing.

But then the thought…what if this is all a dream? What if after he fell asleep, when he woke up, this was all gone? The fear of everything around him disappearing if he went to sleep seized him, and suddenly he found it impossible to close his eyes, even if his surroundings were the most comfortable he’d ever experienced in his life.

He did find some peace in the fact that, from where he was lying in the little house, he could stare out the window and watch the sky shift its colors, growing gradually darker and darker. When it was too dark to see anything outside, in the distance, soft lights started to speckle the sky, and instead of sleeping, Levi watched them appear and twinkle in the sky with wonder.

* * *

**_*Reader POV*_ **

Freshly washed, changed into pajamas, read a story, and tucked in, you were _supposed_ to be ready for bed. The excitement and thrill of your little secret in the playhouse, however, was too powerful to let you close your eyes and sleep.

The boy, Levi–you had no idea where he came from, you just knew that you’d heard a sound at the foot of your bed while coloring and had peeked over the edge to see a very thin, dirty boy with shaggy black hair and faded blue eyes. He looked like he hadn’t ate anything a day in his life, which was why the first question you’d asked was if he’d been hungry. He looked at you like you were stupid for asking the question, but he hadn’t _said_ anything about it being a stupid question, which you figured made it better. Plus it had answered your question. Watching him eat and drink everything you gave him made you feel sad for him, wondering when the last time he had eaten was. Where were his mom and dad? How had he ended up in your bedroom? Was he warm enough out in the playhouse? Did he have enough blankets, enough water? Was he going to need more food?

Was he lonely out there, in the dark with no night light and no one he knew? You had the comfort of knowing your mother was down the hall, even if your father wasn’t going to be home for some time. But he might actually be alone. He’d looked so frail, clutching your favorite teddy bear, sitting there in an oversized shirt curled up in a ball, staring at everything around him like he’d never seen it before. Was he scared and lonely outside now? He didn’t have anyone to tuck him in or read him a story, and it got dark out in that playhouse at night if you didn’t have any lamps or flashlights with you.

The thought of the boy scared and all alone outside made you throw back the covers, bare feet quietly tiptoeing across the carpet as you sought out one of your bedtime story books, a flashlight, another pillow, and another stuffed animal. Once you had your goodies, you very quietly slipped out into the hall, shutting your bedroom door behind you as slowly and quietly as possible as you watched the bottom of your parents’ bedroom door in case the light came on. The stairs were the hardest part, and you had to try not to step on any creaky boards all the way down the stairs, hoping that if you did, the carpet would muffle the sound enough not to wake your mother.

You were pretty much in the clear once you were downstairs as long as you didn’t slam any doors, so you moved quickly and eagerly out of the house and across the lawn, taking care to knock softly on your playhouse door instead of busting through it in the middle of the night so you didn’t scare Levi.

“Levi?” you whispered, opening the door just a crack and seeing a shape move in the darkness against the ground. “Are you still awake?”

There was a moment of silence that made you think he was either fast asleep or you’d accidentally woken him up, but then his scratchy voice came from somewhere off to your left in the dark playhouse.

“I am.”

With his confirmation, you slipped inside the playhouse and shut the door behind you, dropping your pillow, stuffed animal, and book somewhere off to your right and holding the flashlight in your hand–still turned off.

“Why are you out here?” Levi asked, more movement coming from your left.

“I didn’t want you to be alone,” you said simply, feeling a shyness spread through you at the admission. “Cover your eyes, this’ll be bright.”

You waited a few seconds just to be sure he followed your instructions, then flipped on the flashlight, the beam pointed downwards as you felt for the little hook your father put into the middle of the roof to hang blankets and flashlights from to make little blanket forts inside. Levi was partially sitting up, Tuff lying next to him, covered by the blanket you’d given him, a hand over his eyes still as he tried to get used to the light again. He looked so…tiny, and frail. Like an injured bird in the corner of a cardboard box.

Picking up the book you’d brought out with you, you showed him the cover, offering him a smile. “Besides–I can read you a bedtime story. Everyone likes those, and they help you sleep,” you said cheerfully. Honestly, you just wanted to make sure he was all right. You wanted to make sure there was someone to tuck him in and tell him goodnight, to make him feel safe and secure, not alone in a strange place in the dark.

“I don’t need one.”

His statement made you wilt, some of that excitement draining out of you. Oh…if he didn’t like bedtime stories, then…what were you going to do?

Levi shifted uncomfortably at your crestfallen face. “But you can still read it.”

And just like that you had perked up again. “Really?”

When he didn’t say anything else, you took that as consent, happily grabbing your pillow and moving it over next to his, pulling your other favorite stuffed animal up with you and finding the edge of the blankets so you knew where it was. Once everything was set up, you reached up and took the flashlight off the hook, crawling under the blanket with a slightly startled Levi and throwing the blanket over your heads so it was just the two of you lying on pillows, the book sitting between the two of you as you held the flashlight over it so the two of you could see the pictures. Levi was watching the flashlight with that same wide eyed curiosity you’d seen him looking at the sky with earlier.

Without any more messing around, you eagerly launched into reading aloud _The Velveteen Rabbit_ for both of you, flashlight held rather close to the book so that it wasn’t _too_ bright under the blanket–just enough for you to read. Levi was somewhat propped up on his elbows at first while he listened to you reading aloud the story of the stuffed rabbit who longed to be loved enough by a child to become real, though by the time you reached the part where the boy began to love the rabbit so much his shine and splendidness started to fade, Levi was laying down, eyelids looking heavy with sleep like he was liable to nod off at any moment. You kept reading, though, hoping he’d stay awake long enough to at least hear about how, after the rabbit was made really real by a toy fairy, he saw the little boy again.

As you read, you felt your own eyes getting droopy, now that you knew Levi wasn’t alone because you were here to read to him and tuck him in, the worry had faded and sleep was starting to creep in, your head nodding back and forth as you struggled to stay awake and finish the story.

You finished the story with a huge yawn, closing the book and looking up to see that Levi was pretty much asleep, eyes slightly cracked open with a glazed look, and his eyelids were starting to close even as you looked at him. You shut off the flashlight with a light snap, setting the book and flashlight above your pillow so it wouldn’t get in the way as you snuggled into the nest of blankets you’d made Levi, gently pulling the blanket back from over your heads so the two of you could breathe the fresh air instead of the stuffy air under the covers. You were both curled up, thinking how this pile of pillows and blankets was comfier and warmer than your bed inside, just enough room in the playhouse for both you and Levi to be curled up next to each other, Tuff clutched to Levi’s chest while your other stuffed animal was tucked in the crook of your arm, Levi facing the window while you had your back to it.

“Goodnight, Levi,” you managed to murmur out before the feeling of being wrapped up in a fluffy, warm cloud became too much to resist, and you slipped into a blissful sleep.


	2. Like Smoke

_***Levi’s POV*** _

The sound of a distant woman calling a familiar name roused Levi from what may have been one of the best rests he’d had so far in his very young life, eyes fluttering open slowly as he tried to remember where he was. Everything was so soft, and he just wanted to drift back to sleep, curl up in the fluffy warmth around him and…

The woman’s voice came again, a little closer this time, and there came a sudden burst of movement next to him, Levi’s eyes flying open as the little body of Y/N flailed to untangle themselves from the mess of blankets around both of them. She struggled to her feet with a squeak and fumbled for the door that she toppled ungracefully out of, crawling on hands and knees out the door and kicking it shut. Levi was left dazed, halfway risen out of the blankets, and wondering what had just happened, but now also laden down with the weight of several more blankets since she had thrown blankets and pillows onto him in her mad dash to get out the door. He pushed a few blankets off, crawling over to one of the tiny windows to catch a glimpse of the girl reaching the door to the back of the house, where the woman who had been calling her name was standing in the doorway. He could only hear fragments of the conversation if he listened hard enough.

“…sleep in…all night?”

“…forgot…check…almost couldn’t sleep….”

“…school…thirty minutes…late…”

Levi shook his head, dropping back down into the mess of blankets with a muffled yawn as he glanced around trying to find the water bottles in the now tumultuous mass of blankets and pillows. Once he found them buried in one of the corners he finished off the one bottle he’d started on the day before he laid back down, contemplating going back to sleep despite the light filtering into the little house. He was so comfortable, and if something happened and he had to go back, then he wanted to enjoy it while he could.

The door was thrown open, startling Levi with the suddenness of it all as he saw Y/N stick her head inside, huffing like she was out of breath and hadn’t stopped running since she scrambled out of the tiny house. After her head poked in and she saw where Levi was, she tossed a sac of some sheer, opaque material inside, its contents rolling around. She spoke quickly in the brief flash that he saw her, the last part tacked on as she shut the door and hurried away.

“I gotta go, I’m late for school! Here’s food, see you later!”

Her mother shouted from the house for Y/N to hurry, even though she was already scrambling back. Afraid that if he tried to fall asleep again she’d simply re-appear and scare him awake, Levi resigned himself to getting up for the day, reaching for the bag she’d tossed inside and poking through its contents. There were two more rolls inside, no longer fresh and warm like they’d been yesterday, but still good. There was also a green apple, something hard wrapped in some kind of thin, shiny, silvery covering, a spoon, and two white and red containers a little bigger than his hands that were cool to the touch and had a similar silvery covering over the top.

Deciding to investigate the stranger things later, he munched on the bread and the apple first, gazing out the window thoughtfully.

When all that was left of the start of his breakfast was half the apple, he grabbed the bag and one of the water bottles and decided to venture back outside, a little more used to the light this time since he’d woken up to it. His legs were stronger than yesterday, steps surer as he tentatively ventured out of the little house, staying close to the walls of the little house and his head turned towards the house to keep an eye on it as he shuffled closer to the trees behind the house. He wanted a closer look at the trees–wanted to sit quietly outside in the warm sun, breathing in the fresh air while he ate and explore the surface while he was up here. If Y/N was going to be gone for a while, then that was what he wanted to spend the day doing.

The shade was much kinder to him than the direct sunlight, easier on his eyes that were used to the dark and not as hot. It was comfortable and cool in the shade, and he stopped when he saw another large house starting to appear through the trees, doubling back a bit and finding a nice dry patch of grass in the shade to sit down in, curling up comfortably on the ground and squinting up at the sunlight flickering down on him through the leaves. He was close enough to a tree he could put his hand gently against its trunk, feeling the grooves of the bark beneath his fingers and watching the rather large black ants travelling up its trunk while carrying tiny crumbs of food.

Speaking of, he still had the stranger things in the sack she had thrown him to eat.

Resting his back against the tree trunk with his knees pulled halfway up to his chest, Levi set about investigating the stranger, silvery wrapped things in the bag, finding a soothing solace in the quiet and the green all around him.

* * *

_***Reader’s POV*** _

School couldn’t go by fast enough. Sure, you were in trouble with your mother for messing around outside looking for a stuffed animal instead of getting ready for school. It was better than her finding out you’d hid a boy in your playhouse all night, though, right?

Of course, with how antsy _you_ were to get back home and see him when you had school to distract you, he must be bored out of his mind alone in that playhouse! And he wasn’t going to get lunch until you got home, either!

With all these thoughts, you were bouncing in your seat on the bus, then racing home on foot once you finally reached your stop. Your backpack lay abandoned at the front door, causing your mother to yell at you to pick up after yourself as you skidded into the kitchen. Your tongue poked out as you hurried to make a peanut butter and jelly sandwich before your mother came in and tried to stop you from having a pb&j for a ‘light snack’. Once that was finished, you grabbed two Capri Suns your mother probably _thought_ she’d hidden, grabbed a family sized bag of chips, and dashed outside towards the playhouse.

“I’m back! I brought…some…”

You paused, head craning and foot poking at the mess of blankets in case he was simply buried under all the fluffy things. Still, you didn’t find Levi in the playhouse, and you stepped back outside with a frown, wondering where the little boy had disappeared to. Your mother would have instantly pulled you aside to talk about Levi if he’d gone inside the house and been seen. Maybe he’d wandered into the brush behind your house?

Changing directions, you started picking your way through the trees and bushes, looking for the skinny boy you’d been smuggling quite a bit of food to by now.

“Levi? Levi!” you called as you came closer and closer to the backyard of the people who lived behind your family.

You squeaked in surprise as his head suddenly peaked out from behind one of the thicker trees, disheveled strands of black hair falling into eyes that were slightly brighter than they had been yesterday. It seemed he was sitting with his back against the tree, legs curled up towards him, and the plastic bag of food you’d given him earlier now holding his trash at his side. You gave him a bright smile, sitting down next to him and offering the pb&j to him.

“I brought lunch,” you said cheerfully, opening the bag of chips that made Levi jump from the loud pop sound before you placed the bag between the two of you, working on punching the yellow straws into the Capri Suns.

The silence lasted perhaps only a few seconds as Levi tore into the sandwich before it rapidly devolved into almost frantic smacking noises from Levi. Maybe you’d put too much peanut butter on it?

You giggled as you watched him continue to make those smacking noises, struggling with the amount of sticky peanut butter with an amusing look of bemusement on his face. When he looked at you accusingly for laughing at him, you offered him one of the Capri Suns with that bright smile still on your face. He took it carefully from you, eyeing you more than it as you sucked happily on your own Capri Sun. When he finally started drinking the juice, he seemed to relax, the juice soothing his peanut butter problem.

“You must have been bored, out here so long,” you said once your Capri Sun was finished. Levi shrugged, taking smaller bites of the pb&j now.

“I like it out here,” he said simply, and now that you looked, his eyes did seem to constantly drink in the greenery around the two of you.

“There’s a…a con…conservation place a little ways away,” you said slowly, making sure the bigger word came out right. “Mom lets me go play there–we could too. There’s long grass, and trees, and berries, and a pond with fish and frogs and rabbits–we can play there.”

Levi was silent, chewing on the last of his pb&j thoughtfully. “How far is it?” he asked slowly. You suddenly remembered how he’d had a hard time moving around yesterday.

“A few streets over…” you admitted sheepishly. “But I could carry you!”

Levi made a face, but you were already on your feet and exuding raw unbridled, positive energy. “No, really, I’m pretty strong, I can pick up my friend at school, and you’re tinier than them. I could give you a piggyback ride there!”

You started putting your trash in the plastic bag, rolling up the so-far untouched bag of chips. “We can take the chips with us–I’ll throw this away, tell Mom where I’m going, and come get you!” you said cheerfully, already making your way back through the brush towards the house before Levi had the chance to agree or disagree.

* * *

**_*Levi’s POV*_ **

She hadn’t been lying when she said she could carry him. It was embarrassing, but no one seemed to be looking as the two children made their way down the sidewalks. Levi’s legs were wrapped around her waist, her hands tucked under his knees to support him as she leaned forward slightly, Levi leaning against her back with his arms wrapped around her shoulders and across her chest for extra security. His head peeked around hers to look around him as she carried him down a few streets paved with some kind of seamless black stone down the middle and raised brown stone on the sides. Every now and then he saw some sort of strange horseless carriage like objects sitting unmoving along the edge of the black street or still on the wider brown-stone pathways leading up to homes. He didn’t ask what they were, figuring it was something only surface people got to have, and Y/N was pretty much ignoring them, so he figured it was a normal sight for her, even if he found it strange.

As they went up a hill, Y/N started to pant underneath him, her hands starting to feel sweaty on his legs and her movements a little slower.

“I can walk,” Levi murmured as she continued to struggle. He wasn’t entirely sure he’d be able to make it if he tried, honestly, but the girl shook her head.

“No, it’s…just on the other side. I can carry you…the rest of the way,” she said between huffed breaths, shifting her grip on his legs and picking up her speed slightly as she powered stubbornly forward. Levi clung tightly to her, turning his head and resting it on her neck as his eyes looked up at the light blue sky, gaze tracing the outlines of the soft white clouds that drifted lazily by and watching the leaves of the trees in various yards sway high above him in the breeze. If he hadn’t been so transfixed by the sight of the surface world, he could have easily fallen asleep against her back, the secure comfort she was giving him making him feel drowsy in contrast with the energy that raced through his system with the excitement of everything around him. Her breathing underneath him was heavy, and he could feel her quickened heartbeat against his ear, but she kept climbing with Levi on her back without a word of complaint.

When she crested the hill, the street dipped low just briefly before stretching out in one straight road, trees framing both sides for several paces before the trees on the right gave way to a meadow of long grass, just like she said. Levi stretched forward over her shoulder to see it, eyes widening as more and more of it came into view.

Y/N only carried him until the edge of the meadow, setting him down in the soft grass with a relieved sigh. Levi pressed some of the longer grass down as they walked forward, the meadow opening up and dipping into a lower basin where a fairly large body of water rippled and sparkled in the sunlight. On the other side of the meadow was a thick collection of trees and bushes, and if he looked hard enough, he could see spots of dark red or blue on some of the bushes. But that was for later–right now, he wanted to get closer to that giant pond in the middle of the meadow.

The grass tickled his arms and legs, causing him to scratch here and there as he stumbled his way down the uneven slope on shaky legs, Y/N close by the entire time with her head tilted up to the sky and the warm sun with a smile on her face. She was so…so…happy. She probably didn’t have to worry about anything, didn’t have to be afraid of anything. She could only be this happy because she lived on the surface, and the things that lurked in the dark underground weren’t lurking above it. Her life seemed…easy, perfect, and he envied her for it. But he couldn’t envy her for it for long, because she was still sharing it with a dirty Underground dweller like him, even if he couldn’t fathom why.

“Can you swim?” she asked him as they finally reached the bank, already taking off her shoes and socks as she spoke, sitting on her rear with her feet kicking in the air in the process. Levi shook his head, and she gave him a sheepish smile. “I’m not a good swimmer, yet, I just bob. We can just stick our feet in, cause it gets a little deep.”

She sat down on the edge and dipped her feet in with a little giggle, smoothing down a patch of the long grass around her and looking at him expectantly. Levi still approached the water slowly despite the fact he was already imagining how refreshing it was going to feel, not wanting to get too eager and accidentally fall in after she said it was deep. He settled down next to her, feet stretching out experimentally towards the water and tentatively dipping his rather dirty feet below the surface. It was cool–not cold thanks to the sun shining down on it, but not warm either. Pleasant in contrast to the warm air with the sun beaming down on him when there was no shade to protect him. Levi leaned down, letting his hand dip into the water as well, swirling the waters around between his fingers.

While he was doing that, a thought occurred to him, and he dunked both hands below the water, taking the time to scrub at the dirt on his hands, arms, legs, and feet before he cupped his hands and scooped up water to splash on his face, rubbing at the dirt there, as well. It felt so good to be clean, to see and feel the dirt giving way against the crystalline water and see the water droplets against his skin shimmer clearly under the sunlight.

Now he wouldn’t get any more dirt on all those comfy blankets and pillows in the small house he was sleeping in.

There was a sudden splash, and water spattered across his face, followed by the sounds of giggles beside him. He was taken aback at first, looking over at Y/N just in time to see her splash the water towards him again with a huge grin on her face. She laughed more audibly this time, with Levi trying to duck to avoid getting splashed in the face again before he returned the splashes with some of his own. It quickly escalated, water sloshing violently between them and getting them both soaked, Y/N’s gleeful shrieks filling the air and a wide smile working its way across Levi’s face. He felt lighter than he’d felt in some time, like he would float away up into that blue sky any moment.

“Okay, okay! Uncle! Uncle! I give up!” she eventually laughed, the splashing finally calming down and the waters returning to its calm state around their feet. They were soaked now, and Levi shivered, but the sun was still warm against his skin, and he felt like he’d dry out in no time. Y/N pulled her feet out of the water, trying to wring the water out of her hair as she stretched, eyes on the bushes on the other side of the pond. “Do you want some berries?”

“Okay.”

He watched her head over to the bushes he’d been eyeing earlier, brushing hair out of his face and watching as she picked berries off the bushes and used her shirt as a makeshift basket to collect them in. The only sound was the occasional drip of disturbed water or the rustle of leaves, and he laid down, some of the grass curling back up around him and towards the sky. A soft breeze wafted the grass above him, the thin blades waving in and out of his immediate field of vision.

_Please…let me stay…_

A few minutes later, Y/N had reappeared, standing over him with her shirt basket heavy with berries as she kneeled down next to him. He sat up on his elbows as she showed him her collection of small red cup-shaped berries and round blue berries, her free hand already digging into her collection to grab a few of the red berries.

“Raspberries are my favorite,” she explained with a small giggle, offering the berries to him after she’d grabbed what she wanted. Levi got a handful for himself, a lot less hesitant in trying the foods this time since almost everything she’d given him so far had been delicious.

He didn’t care much for those chalky rectangular things in the silver wrapping this morning, though.

Something caught Y/Ns attention, her head turned to the side as she went still, nose wrinkling as she suddenly became far more concentrated than Levi had seen her so far.

“Hold these,” she said quietly, dumping the rest of the berries on him so suddenly that Levi had to scramble to snatch them up before they all tumbled to the ground. She wasn’t even paying attention anymore, crouching low in the grass and creeping slowly towards the pond like a kitten stalking a mouse. He watched her, confused, wondering for a few moments if she’d seen a fish in the pond or a bird or something.

Suddenly, her hands shot out, cupped around something as she let out a loud squeal and leapt to her feet.

“I got it, I got it!” she crowed, prancing back over to where Levi was sitting, getting really close on her knees with her cupped hands between them. She held it up close to his face, but craned her head awkwardly so she could see as well, forehead knocking against his. “I don’t want it…to get away…”

Slowly, she bent her thumbs, a small crack appearing in her cupped hands that she gradually widened further and further. At first, Levi didn’t see anything, but then, slowly, two glimmering, tiny, beady black eyes caught some of the sun, and Levi realized there was some kind of tiny creature trapped in her hands. He got closer, trying to see what it was, faintly making out a fat but tiny body, spindly limbs, and–

Y/N suddenly shrieked, hands opening reflexively. “ ** _AH_**! It peed on me!”

All Levi registered was _peed_ and the fact that suddenly a tiny little brown and spotted body was flying out of her hands, through the air, and directly towards him. His own vocal reaction was lost in her continued shrieks of disgust as he tried to get out of the way, a tiny, bumpy, sort of slimy body landing on his arm. Afraid the thing was going to pee on him, too, his arm jerked upwards in response, and it flew off of him and disappeared back into the tall grass.

Y/N had abandoned him to the little menace already, her hands plunged into the pond as she scrubbed valiantly at her hands, muttering _ew_ over and over before she pulled them back out and tried to shake the water off her hands. Levi was still wide eyed and trying to figure out what just happened.

That grin was back on her face as she turned towards him again. “I think I want to try and catch another one!”

“ _Why_?”

“So I know I can really catch a frog; I wasn’t just lucky that time!”

Levi scowled, looking down at all the berries that had been scattered everywhere while he’d flailed around trying to get away from the stupid, tiny frog. She only laughed at his reaction, coming over and grabbing his arm to pull him up onto his feet, dragging him with her towards the trees.

“Okay, okay, we can play hide and seek instead. There’s plenty of places to hide in the woods. C’mon, c’mon!”

And just like that, the little hellion frog was forgotten as she urged him on towards the next experience, sweeping him away into more discoveries and experiences before he had the chance to dwell too long on whatever bad tried to poke through. Even though his legs were shaky, she volunteered to be ‘it’ over and over so he could rest in his hiding spots while she tried to find him, stopping every now and then to look at a bug they’d found, to pick a few berries from the bushes in the area, and at one point, to stare in wonder at a small nest of baby bunnies hidden in a hollow at the base of a tree. They looked but didn’t touch, watching the two tiny rabbits squinting back at them with their little noses twitching furiously, the two rabbits curled close together much like Levi and Y/N had curled up under the blankets last night.

And when the sky started to turn to a rusted orange, she carried him on her back without complaint once again as they headed towards her house once more. Levi could hardly stand after all the running around they’d done, but he didn’t regret it. In fact, he was perfectly content, even with the burn in his legs and ache in his arms. He was already dozing off as he tucked his head against her back once again, the exhaustion mixed with the relief from her carrying him back instead of him having to walk back, mixed in with the warm air and the dim light from the sun making it easy to simply…drift…

He woke up long enough to realize when he was being set down in front of the little house, weaving on his feet as Y/N helped him back inside and he curled up in the cloud of blankets and pillows with a softly sighed good-night, his hand groping about to find Tuff before he slipped into a blissful sleep.

* * *

When Levi opened his eyes again, it wasn’t to the bright light filtering into the tiny house as he curled up in a nest of blankets. It was dark, and the smell of sweat and dirt and decay assaulted him much more viscerally after the contrast of the clean, fresh air. He wasn’t even curled up on his side like he’d been when he’d fallen asleep, but still sitting with his knees pulled up to his chest, back against the wall, arms wrapped around his legs.

Directly across from him was the bed that still had his mother’s dead body.

_It was…a dream?_

Blinking slowly, it seemed he hadn’t moved an inch, and he was covered in dirt and grime once more, not a hint of a clean patch of skin after scrubbing clean by that pond.

_Or was I…seeing things?_

It didn’t matter…it wasn’t real. Levi’s heart plummeted, and he ducked his head into his arms, surprised that his eyes actually stung with tears when he’d thought he was too dehydrated to cry anymore. None of it was real. The surface, the sun, the air, all the green, the nest of blankets, the food, the girl…it wasn’t real. He was still wasting away, forgotten where no one cared about him anymore, waiting to finally die. If he was seeing things, maybe he was finally close.

And yet…

The door to the room opened, a pale yellow light cutting across the room and over the bed, drawing Levi’s attention towards the man who stood just inside the doorway. The sudden appearance made him forget–for the time being–that he wasn’t hungry anymore.

* * *

_***Reader’s POV*** _

“Where do you think you’re going with that bowl, young lady?”

You froze by the back door, a bowl of cereal you were hoping to bring out to Levi before you had to go to school in hand, suddenly feeling cold at your mother’s scolding tone. This was it, you’d been caught, you couldn’t think of an excuse fast enough and your mother was already closing in, probably to take the bowl from you, but Levi needed to eat before you left.

Looks like you couldn’t hide the boy in your playhouse much longer. Why did you feel like telling your mom about him was going to get you in trouble.

“I…I need to…Levi needs breakfast,” you said in a small voice, feeling like you were about to get yelled at any moment.

“Levi?” your mother asked, pausing just by the door. “Who’s Levi?”

“T…The boy in the playhouse.”

Her expression went blank, and then for some reason, worried. “There’s a boy in the playhouse?”

You nodded very slowly. “He-he’s been there since the other day. He needs to eat before I go to school, or he’ll have to wait till I’m home.”

Your mother’s expression was unreadable as she stared at you and the bowl in your hand for several long moments, then carefully said in an even tone, “Can I see Levi?”

She wasn’t yelling, so you didn’t think she was angry. Maybe this was good–if your mom knew about Levi, she could make sure he was taken care of while you were at school–he could have real food and eat dinner inside with you, sleep in a bed–or on the couch at least–and probably get a change of clothes.

After you nodded, your mom took the bowl out of your hands and followed you outside towards the playhouse. You hoped he was already awake–he probably was, since he’d fallen asleep so early yesterday.

“Levi?” You called softly, opening the door to see…a mass of blankets and pillows, like yesterday. Again, you pushed around a few of the blankets but couldn’t find him. Your mom was standing outside the house with the bowl still and you shook your head as you immediately went to look in the brush again. “He was back here when I came outside yesterday, he’s probably there, now.”

“Y/N…” your mother was starting to say tiredly, but you were already picking through the trees looking for Levi again, ignoring her as you tried to find your new friend.

“Levi? Levi? _Levi_!” you called, hoping his head would peek around one of the trees again. But he didn’t show up–you couldn’t find a trace of him. Did he leave? Did he leave in the middle of the night or before you woke up? He’d seemed happy yesterday, so why would he leave? Didn’t he like you, didn’t he like sleeping in the blanket nest?

“Y/N, its okay to have imaginary friends, but you can’t waste food on them, they don’t eat like you and mommy and daddy–” your mother was saying carefully behind you. Hearing her suggest Levi wasn’t real made you suddenly angry and frustrated as well as hurt at the thought that Levi had simply left.

“He wasn’t imaginary, he was _real_! A _real_ boy that was _really_ here!” Your eyes burned and a few angry, hurt tears slipped past your eyes, the words starting to stick in your throat as you felt yourself starting to cry. “His name was _Levi_ …and he didn’t even say bye.”


	3. Confirmation

_(A couple years later)_

_***Reader’s POV*** _

Your pinky still hurt from where Sam had twisted it, but you chewed on your bottom lip and tried to ignore the ache, reminding yourself never to let them sit next to you on the bus again. ‘I’m your friend’ they said, ‘I’ll be nice to you’ they said, ‘I’ll also hurt you to make you agree with me.’

_Some friend._

Your feet planted firmly on the sidewalk, the last one on this bus stop to get off–something you always made sure of–before kicking at a stray rock. Your house was across the street and right down the road, which was why your parents weren’t too worried about letting you walk from the bus stop back home by yourself. The bus stop was close enough to the house they could see when it arrived–maybe they could even spot your brightly colored backpack if they squinted.

The bus started to pull away with a hiss, so you turned around, waiting for the bus to pull away and looking both ways for any more cars as you hurried across the street where the small local playground was. Your head didn’t stop looking left to right until your foot planted firmly on the sidewalk, looking straight ahead and across the playground.

Where initially there hadn’t been anyone still lingering around the park, you could now see that on the other side there was a boy about your age and wearing a brown jacket, black shirt, tan pants. He was on the skinny side, pale, black hair dangling just past his ears, a little dirty, like he’d been running around outside for quite some time. And he was familiar. He looked a little like…like…

A slender hand was raised to shield his eyes from the sun as he staggered back a step or two, looking around in confusion before his faded–but brighter than last time–blue eyes turned towards you.

* * *

**_*Levi’s POV*_ **

For the second time in his life, Levi found himself abruptly blinded by a light brighter than anything in the Underground, cringing away as he reeled from the suddenness of it all, trying to get his bearings. The stench of the Underground was also abruptly missing, replaced by the scent of…of fresh air. Like in that dream so long ago…

A slight breeze ruffled his hair as his eyes gradually adjusted to the light, though he was still squinting against it as he started to look around and take in his surroundings. It could have been the sparse fenced in park that drew his attention first, or the person on the other side of the park that was staring at him, but instead it was the moving yellow long horseless carriage thing that drew his attention. His eyes went wide as he watched it turn a corner and continue on with a loud hum, nothing visibly pulling it and yet it still moved, shapes of people inside moving rapidly behind a line of windows that weren’t warped in the slightest. It was like a larger, moving version of the strange horseless carriages he’s seen in that hallucination when he was starving.

The dream…the surface…the girl…

The sky above him was open, stretching in an endless blue with wisps of clouds floating lazily by. Some kind of bird was so high up in the air he couldn’t even see it moving its wings, like it was gliding forward on winds so strong and high above the earth it didn’t need to beat its wings to fly through the air. Most of the grass was the luscious green he remembered with a few patches a pale brown, and the large brown stone bordering the paved black street was cracked and covered in rock and dirt, in some places upended and poking up into the air. Wooden houses of a variety of colors and conditions lined the streets, more of the horseless carriages much smaller than the yellow one that had just passed were stopped in varying spots near the houses, and a few kids were walking in different directions, probably headed to their homes. One in particular, however, was standing just across the small fenced in park from Levi, wide-eyed gaze locked on him, and when he finally looked at her, the recognition was nearly instant.

She was taller than last time, her hair a little longer, features more defined, but she didn’t look that much different from the last time he’d seen her. Not as different as Levi looked, no longer the skin and bones he’d been when he first saw her now that he wasn’t about to die from starvation, and having grown a little himself. If he’d already gotten that haircut he was thinking about, it might be even harder for her to recognize him. Still, she was staring at him rather openly, but it wasn’t until their eyes met that the recognition sparked in her eyes.

As she started to walk towards him, Levi’s hand clenched into a fist, the pain from his fingernails digging into his palms telling him that no, this wasn’t a dream, this was very much real. So…so it had all been real, then? This wasn’t just another hallucination, he was really on the surface? Last time he’d been about to die, so it made sense for him to have suddenly drifted off or hallucinated being somewhere better, but now, he didn’t have an excuse to be drifting off. He’d been completely alert, watching Kenny as he showed Levi where to aim and how to slice through a man larger than him. But how had he ended up here so fast?

Y/N came to a stop in front of him, head down and not quite looking at him, kicking at the ground. “Hi,” she mumbled, surprisingly lackluster compared to her entire presence the last time he’d seen her.

“Hey,” he responded almost reflexively, not entirely sure what had caused the switch in attitude. Had she found out where he was from? Was he about to get kicked back below ground and told he wasn’t supposed to taint someone’s daughter with his presence? The longer the awkward silence stretched between them, the more he tensed, waiting for some kind of rejection. Finally, he saw her lower lip tremble, her eyes squeezing shut as she turned her head back up, and he braced for the inevitable.

“Why’d you leave without saying goodbye?” she suddenly blurted out, hands tight around the straps of the colorful pack slung over her back.

_Wait…_

This wasn’t about where he was from, but about…not saying goodbye before disappearing?

She suddenly looked so small in front of him, retreating into herself in a cringe like she was embarrassed by her outburst but still wanted an answer, looking away again with that slight tremble to her lip like she was liable to start crying.

“I-I–" He didn’t know what to say. She was obviously hurt, but he didn’t mean to leave so suddenly. He’d wanted to stay, and he didn’t know what had happened either. But he didn’t want her thinking he’d ditched her after she’d been so kind to him.

"I didn’t mean to,” he started hesitantly. “I don’t know what happened. I just woke up back…home.”

That seemed to pacify her, though she still seemed gloomy. “Well…I need to get home…” she said slowly, looking down the street behind him. “D'you want to come?”

Levi gave a small nod in answer. Where else was he going to go? He didn’t know anyone on the surface besides her, and he didn’t know how to get back to the Underground and Kenny. Not that he was in a rush to go back. To Kenny, yes, probably, but the Underground? Not really.

Y/N brightened when he agreed to come with her, already starting to regain a skip in her step again as she took charge, leading him away from the park and down the cracked stone path. As she led the way, she started to talk much like when he first met her, chatting aimlessly about whatever seemed to come to mind. He was informed about things as trivial as a budding rock collection and her favorite rocks in it, her favorite school subjects being history and math, her family considering getting a pet…

Every now and then she’d turned to look at him, though he couldn’t decide if it was to make sure he was actually paying attention or she was trying to give him a chance to speak up. He didn’t say anything, though. Talking about learning how to gut a man three times or more his size and how to properly use a knife seemed out of place with the kind of stuff she was talking about, so he opted for silence and simply listened to her talk.

“I also started taking piano lessons,” she was currently saying cheerfully, having slowed her walk slightly so that Levi could come even with her instead of trailing behind her. “There’s…a lot, and its hard to stretch my fingers to get all the keys since my hands are so small right now…but I can play both parts of Chopsticks, and Mary Had A Little Lamb, and Hot Cross Buns–easy things like that. I’ve already found some other piano songs I want to learn to play when I’m good enough, but those are going to take forever to figure out–there’s so many notes and symbols I don’t even recognize yet…But I’m gonna learn to do it! I’ll even learn to play Fur Elise first–I already hear it all the time cause it’s the lullaby on my music–”

Two other boys suddenly blew past both of them, similar but less colorful packs on their backs, and even though they rushed right past Levi and Y/N, he managed to get a glimpse of smug smiles on their faces. As they pushed by, the both shoved Y/N to the ground, hard enough that she skidded forward, blood suddenly starting to trickle along her arms, palms, and two small stains starting to blossom on her knees. She’d gone down with a sharp cry as she connected with the ground, but both of them still heard the insults as they brushed by.

“ _Move it_ , buttface!”

“Stupid retard.”

Levi wasn’t impressed. They didn’t even have the balls to use _ass_ instead of _butt_. It was more the fact they’d pushed her hard enough to the ground she was bleeding up and down her arms and on her knees in the dirt, tears pricking in her eyes, that got a rise out of him. Eyes flashing, Levi went from taking in Y/N’s state to whipping around to fix the two boys with a glare.

“Hey! _Assholes_! Say sorry, now!” Levi snapped, knowing the use of the _scary bad word_ by the tiny, dirty kid who’d been next to her would get their attention. One of the things Kenny had taught him was that he had to show his strength was greater than others to be on top, and even though these two boys looked a little taller and a little older than Levi, they were surface dwellers whose eyes went wide at a simple _word_. Then they looked down at him with those same smug smiles as when they’d pushed Y/N to the ground, overconfident and arrogant. They were idiots who needed to be pushed back so they realized they weren’t the big bad tough guys they seemed to think they were. It wasn’t going to take much to scare them off–Levi’d already been thrown into scuffles over food with scarier, far more threatening people by now. These two were just bullies who’d pushed the wrong person.

“ _Make me_ , short stack.”

“Must be a pathetic loser to be hanging around _her_.”

One of them moved to push Levi backwards and into the ground, but Levi was faster, turning aside, grabbing their arm, and pulling them in his direction, throwing the other boy off balance and sending him sprawling face-first into the ground.

“Hey!” the other protested, lunging blindly at Levi like he was going to try tackling him or pinning him down. Levi tucked low and barreled into him, knocking the second boy backwards and onto the ground.

And that’s all it took. With Levi easily knocking them both to the ground and standing over them with a look in his eyes that said he was ready to lay them out again if they tried him, they both skidded back from him and scrambled to their feet, the one who’d face planted after trying to push Levi sporting scrapes on his chin and palms.

“Apologize,” Levi repeated firmly before they could scurry away.

“S-sorry,” the scraped one said.

“Not me, her,” Levi snapped out, making the other kid wince as he looked at Y/N behind Levi and stuttered out the same weak apology.

“Yeah, what he said,” the other said, already pulling on his friend’s arm. “C’mon, let’s go.”

And just like that, they were gone.

“ _Tch_.” After they’d disappeared down a side street, Levi turned back to Y/N, who had already stood up on her own, a little shake in her hands, knees noticeably kept bent with darker stains on her pants, but no sign of the tears in her eyes anymore, since she was using her shoulder to wipe away any that remained. “Are you–”

“I’m okay,” she said a little too quickly, rubbing almost angrily at her eyes and holding her hands out in front of her. “I just need to get home.”

Levi watched her closely as she hobbled forwards, steps ginger and her posture telling him she was trying to keep from bending her knees, the scrapes probably raw and painful when the skin stretched. When she came within arm’s reach of Levi, he gently grasped her arm to see how bad the cuts and scrapes were. Her elbows had beads of blood breaking past the cracked-looking skin, a fairly shallow cut down her arm seemed to have only bled a little before settling for _looking_ angry, and her palms were a mess of cuts and blood and little rocks digging into her palms. Dirt and rock dust coated all of them.

She gently pulled her arms out of his grip once he was done looking, still mindful not to brush up against anything. “I just need to wash up when we get to my house, I’ll be okay,” she assured him again, though her tone was more convincing this time, continuing her tentative walk forward while picking the tiny rocks out from where they were embedded in her palms

It was almost like she was used to this kind of thing…not at all something he would have expected from the girl who’d taken care of him a few years ago. Especially as she turned back around and flashed him another big smile, as if she wasn’t walking with blood up and down her arms and staining her pants, afraid to bend at the elbows and knees and make the scrapes and cuts hurt more.

“I can splash you with the water from the hose while I’m at it–you seemed to like it last time,” she said mischievously.

“Don’t,” he said bluntly. He only had the one set of clothes right now, and there was a breeze this time that was a little chilly–it’d probably get worse if he ended up soaking wet. Last time it had been warm and they’d been outside for a long time, and he’d been dirty, this time, he’d rather avoid getting wet.

She pouted at him. “Aw, but it could be fun!”

“No.”

“Pft…Buzzkill.”

Ignoring the teasing jab, Levi looked ahead, able to see the faintly familiar house but only partially confident it was the right house considering he’d only seen it briefly twice from the front when he’d been here last. And at the time, he’d been looking up more than he’d been looking around. He had to slow his pace so Y/N wouldn’t fall behind with her tentative waddle, keeping an eye on her the rest of the way. The entire time, she continued to work her way up to her usual chatter, as if the entire confrontation with the other boys had never happened. And because he wasn’t convinced that she was all right, he continued to watch her closely, even if she _seemed_ okay, besides the obvious.

“C’mon, the hose is in the back, and I want to wash up, first. Better not get Mom’s furniture all bloody or she’ll have a fit,” she said when Levi hesitated by the door, continuing to waddle right past him and disappear around the side of the house. Levi followed after her, turning the corner in time to see her lift the handle on a water spout that had a long green tube coiled around it, the end of the tube in one of her bloodied hands with water spouting in a steady stream out of the tube and onto her other hand. By the time Levi came to stand next to her, she’d already tentatively washed her left hand, arm, and elbow of dirt and blood and was starting on the other.

“Ow, ow, ow,” he heard her chanting softly under her breath as she had to scrub a little to get some of the dirt out of the minor injuries, a muscle in her jaw twitching. She lowered the handle of the pump when she was done with her arms, the water flow ceasing as she crouched down and started to take off her shoes and socks. She handed the limp green tube over to Levi without a word, still crouching and starting to roll up her pant legs once her hands were free. When she finally rolled both pant legs past her knees to reveal the knees that were still scraped up enough to soak blood through her pant legs, but not as badly as her palms had been, she took the hose back and repeated the process.

Levi stayed quiet the entire time, watching her wash away the dirt and blood with the softest hiss of pain here and there, trying not to think about how much water she was using to clean up and how she’d save the majority of what she was using if she just used a little in a bowl and a rag instead.

Finally, she turned the pump off again and re-coiled the green tube, putting her socks and shoes back on but leaving her pant legs rolled up past her knees. “There–it stings a little, but it’s fine, now,” she said brightly, shaking her hands and sending water droplets everywhere. She did move a little faster now as she brushed past him again to head for the front door, even grabbing his wrist–lightly–to pull him along just as avidly as the first time he’d been here. Except this time he was able to easily keep up and wasn’t being dragged around like a sack of wheat.

She got all the way to the front door, stretched her hand out to open it, and paused. The scrapes of her palm were facing her, fingers suddenly curling inwards as her hand hovered just shy of the doorknob, pulled back a few inches…

Her hand snapped out and she opened the door without any hesitation, but instead of going inside like she’d said they would, she simply stuck her head in the door. “Mom! I’m gonna go play at the park with a friend!” she hollered.

“Do you have homework?” came the slightly faded reply.

“Nope! Can I go?”

“I want you back before dinner! Do you have your watch?”

Y/N sagged and sighed dramatically, as if her mother had just asked her to redecorate the entire neighborhood in an hour. “I’ll get it.”

She shrugged off her colorful pack, looking back at Levi. “Wait here, I just have to run up to my room,” she said, throwing the pack on the ground by the door and disappearing inside.

Levi stepped away from the door, taking a moment to let his gaze wander across the sights of the surface again while he waited. The grass didn’t seem as healthy as the last time he was here, but perhaps that was because it was closer to the turn in seasons this time. The trees still stretched high above him with sunlight filtering through, the sky still that vast expanse of blue with a few more clouds drifting lazily by than last time. The air was still fresh and clear, free of the scent of decay, waste, sweat, rot–the general stench of the Underground he’d grown so used to he wouldn’t know there was any other kind of natural smell if it hadn’t been for these strange trips to the surface.

Levi’s gaze flickered back to the door handle, her hesitant, scratched up hand still hovering just in front of it in his mind’s eye. Did she change her mind about going inside the house because she didn’t want her mom to see she was hurt? It had looked like the sight of her scraped up palms reaching for the door had been what made her hesitate…

The door banged open as the object of his current train of thought burst back outside with that same wild, energetic look as when she’d bustled between the main house and the mini house making what could only be described as a nest for him last time.

“I have my watch, let’s go, let’s go!” she said impatiently, stumbling past him and waving for him to follow as she started back the way they had just walked from. She ran like she wasn’t hurt, like none of it had ever happened even if the evidence was clear as day on her arms and legs. She just kept…running forward, no hesitation.

* * *

**_*Reader’s POV*_ **

Your knees hurt, your hands hurt, your arms all the way up to your elbows hurt, but none of that mattered. _Levi_ was back, running right behind you as you led the charge forward towards the playground. He didn’t look nearly as sickly as he had last time, either–he was moving just fine on his own, though he was still thin, pale, and still looked unkempt. His neck wasn’t craning in every direction to see every and anything this time, though his eyes still roamed over his surroundings constantly. But none of that was at the front of your mind at the moment–right now you were only thinking of how if he was feeling better, if he wasn’t fragile like last time, he could play, really _play_ , this time. You had a friend, if he was able to stay this time.

You skipped to a stop once you were back at the playground, turning around and spreading your arms wide. “What do you want to do first? Merry-Go-Round? See-saw? Jungle gym? Slide? Swings?” you asked excitedly, pointing to each one in turn. Levi looked hesitant, eyes sliding past the swings, slide, and see-saw in disinterest and instead gazing at the jungle gym and merry-go-round curiously. You weren’t that great at the jungle gym and its attached monkey bars, especially with your hands hurting like they did right now, so you jumped at the opportunity to pull Levi forward again when his eyes lingered on the merry-go-round. “Let’s do the merry-go-round–I’ll push!”

Since he looked so tiny, even if he had tackled the older boy to the ground earlier, you figured you should probably be the one to push. Besides, you were a decent pusher for the merry-go-round, and it would be easy with only one person sitting on it–plus, you would only have to use your hands for a little while instead of having to hold on and climb on the jungle gym dome and monkey bars.

Levi started to sit on the edge, but you gently nudged him towards the center, your other hand already grabbing one of the handles. “No, no, get _inside_ the bars, I don’t want you flying off,” you chided him, his eyes widening _slightly_ at your words as he climbed inside and held onto the closest metal bars with both hands. You smiled cheerfully at him. “Better! Hold on!”

You were slow at first, of course, well aware of how anti climatic it must have seemed, before the merry-go-round started to push easier as it went faster…and faster…and faster…

When you felt yourself start to stretch as the merry-go-round pulled ahead of you, you let go and stepped back, pushing the handles forward as they spun by, rather proud of your merry-go-round pushing work as you kept it going. You’d kept your head down while you pushed, but now that you were looking up you could see Levi clutching the bars tightly with his head down, feet slowly starting to peek past the outer bar as he started to slide out. Not wanting him to get flung off the merry-go-round with how tiny he looked, knowing it would hurt, you suddenly reached out and grabbed the merry-go-round when his knees slipped past the outer bar, digging in your heels to force the merry-go-round to a stop. As soon as the merry-go-round slowed down enough so he wasn’t being pulled out anymore, Levi pulled himself back up, already climbing back over the bar and down from the merry-go-round when you had almost brought it to a halt. He looked a little green…

“Not fun,” he said with a small grimace. You gave him a sheepish smile.

“Sorry, I probably shouldn’t have made it go so fast. Guess I’m actually pretty strong!” you said, puffing your chest out and striking a strongman pose. Levi grumbled something unintelligible, and your bravado flickered, the sheepishness returning. “Sorry…the jungle gym doesn’t spin, though, you just climb on it,” you tried to amend.

Skipping over to the dome of metal bars with monkey bars attached that branched over to the small, wooden castle slide structure, you chose to only climb the first two rungs as a demonstration, that way you were more walking on a sloped surface than climbing with your hands. This one he didn’t hesitate with once he was told what it was for, climbing on, through, and around the bars like it was nothing, even climbing to the top of the dome and hanging upside-down with his legs holding him up. Something you could surely try on a better day, but not something you wanted to test today. Instead of joining him crawling all over the jungle gym, you hopped off of your pedestal and slipped over to the swings a few paces away, opting for the normal swing instead of the tire one. You could feel Levi’s eyes on you as you took a seat, with his arm currently hooked around one bar while one of his legs hooked around another. It was like he was expending some pent up energy, crawling all over the bars.

As always, you were slow to start on the swing on your own, not yet big enough for your feet to touch the ground enough to kick off yourself and get you started. You had to swing your legs back and forth and rock to build up the momentum, a brief burn in your knees causing you to regret it for a few moments before you finally started to _swing_. Higher and higher you went back and forth, a huge grin on your face, Levi’s eyes on you, and pride swelling at how high you could swing. You could go high enough the chain would start to slack while you were high up in the air, causing a jarring rattling sound as you swung back towards the ground again. When the slacking chain increased enough to make your heart pound faster with thoughts of the swing going high enough to go full circle, you counted down in your head from three…two…one…

High enough you felt like you were flying, but not so high that you’d get caught in the swing, you let go and let yourself propel forward without the swing, a shout of alarm somewhere below you before you felt your feet connect with the ground and your crouching legs were jarred by the impact of your landing.

With a victorious whoop, you pumped your fist in the air, turning to grin at a wide eyed Levi that had gone from crawling in and around the jungle gym to outside of it and two steps closer to where you were in the short time it took for you to jump from the swing.

“And she sticks the landing!” you crowed, wiggling in what was supposed to be a dance but honestly probably looked more like flailing. Your heart was still pounding in your ears from excitement at the brief sensation of flying, proud that you’d not only successfully jumped off the swing and landed on your feet, but also that you’d gotten such a reaction from Levi. “Tada! Whaddya think?”

Levi huffed and looked away, looking like he was about to sulk. “Is there something else we can do?”

A little put out by his request and refusal to comment, you suppressed a sigh and deflated slightly, looking around at the other playground equipment. You wanted to do something _with_ him that he might enjoy, but you couldn’t climb right now like he could…

His attention returned to you as you brightened once more. “Let’s play a game!”

He looked at you blankly for a second before tentatively asking, “Like hide and seek?”

“Well, like it, yeah, but not hide and seek–there’s not really anywhere to hide. We can play tag!” Levi simply gave you a blank look. Your enthusiasm was momentarily tampered by hesitation when he didn’t immediately react with recognition. “You…haven’t played tag before?”

Levi shook his head, and for a moment, you were stunned. How did any child on Earth who had ever been around another kid not know how to play tag? Then again…the last time you’d seen him, he hadn’t known what hide and seek was, and that was a game you’d played with your parents _long_ before you ran into other kids. Though usually it was more a game of peek-a-boo then tag…

You shook away the idle thoughts and the surprise, the determination from when you’d learned he hadn’t played hide and seek before returning once more. “That’s all right, I can teach you!” you said confidently.

Levi seemed interested after you explained the rules–which didn’t take long since it was such a simple game–and was even willing to be _it_ first. You let him, feeling rather confident in your ability to run and avoid with all the practice running and evading you got day after day at school.

But even with how fast you were, you weren’t prepared for how fast _Levi_ was. He looked tiny and frail, but as he demonstrated earlier, that wasn’t the case. You’d hardly taken three steps before you felt his hand on your back and he darted away. You could have just attributed it to the fact that you’d started so close together, or that you hadn’t had the chance to _really_ run yet, but as you started to chase after him, it became painfully obvious that he was much, much faster than you. And really good and dodging things, too, if the way he weaved around the equipment counted. When you finally rounded the corner of the castle slide and your fingers managed to breeze across his arm, you were suspicious he might have let it happen, not entirely confident that you’d actually managed to catch up to him or catch him off guard. Not that you had much time to think about it before you were off like a shot again, this time knowing that you were going to have to do more than simply run. You tried climbing, jumping, zig-zagging–you even slid under the monkey bars and far more clumsily tried to launch yourself through one of the holes to avoid him. All to no avail–you still felt his hand on your arm this time, turning just in time to see him racing back towards the merry-go-round. With a huff, you gave chase all over again.

It was a little frustrating playing tag with one other person who was much faster than you–it wasn’t like you could go after a slower target. But at the same time, it was fun. It made it all the more exhilarating when you managed to tag him, and you thought it was fun trying to think of crazier and crazier ways to avoid him on the playground equipment. Your hurt knees and arms were forgotten as you tried to run across the merry-go-round (that had ended miserably) and run up the slide (He’d had better traction with his speed and it actually slowed you down and made it easier for him to tag you), your most successful attempt to avoid his tag having been the few minutes you’d climbed onto the monkey bars and pulled yourself up with your hands clutching one bar and your legs resting on the next, keeping yourself out of Levi’s reach…until he climbed on the monkey bars as well and you had to jump and run all over again.

And you saw him smiling.

His hair kept getting in his face, both of you were eventually red and sweaty, and sometimes you only caught glimpses of each other, but you saw it, even more clearly than when you two had splashed each other with water last time. His eyes were bright, and not just because the sunlight was bringing out the blue in his eyes. You even heard him laugh a few times when he managed to _just barely_ evade your hand more than once and you made a sound of frustration, his breathless, quiet laugh urging you to try again. Occasionally he’d smirk at you over his shoulder as he ran off again after tagging you. He was having _fun_ , you both were, which is why you didn’t stop until he was panting and you were _wheezing_ , dropping down into the grass like a stone in a lake and starfishing on the ground when your legs refused to run anymore. Levi simply sat down next to you, he didn’t flop, both of you taking a moment to catch your breath.

“I’m happy…you came back…Levi” you managed to say around your wheezing breaths, throat dry, chest burning, and limbs too tired to even try and sit up.

“Me too.”

You thought back to what he said, how he didn’t know what happened last time, how he’d just woken up and he’d been back home. If he didn’t know when he’d have to leave again…

“You’ll have to…go back, though…right?”

Levi was quiet for a moment besides his breathing, which was slowly starting to even out. “Yeah.”

“Promise…you’ll come back again?” you asked, trying to sit up and look at him. Levi hesitated, eyes flickering away and down towards the ground, like he expected it to open up and swallow him like some kind of monster. “C’mon, you came back this time! You can…come back again,” you said firmly, uncaring if you sounded bossy.

Levi nodded slowly, though he still seemed unsure. “All right.”

You held out your hand, every finger curled into a fist except your pinky, which was stretched out towards him. “Pinky promise?”

Levi stared at your hand, giving you that increasingly familiar look that he had no idea what you were talking about. Rolling your eyes, you reached out and took his hand with your other one, making it into a mirror image of yours and hooking your pinkies together, giving his pinky a tight squeeze.

“There, you can’t break a pinky promise, or you’ll die!” you said in a tone more suited to a summer campfire scary story. Levi narrowed his eyes and snorted, and you released his pinky with a small smile. “Okay, you won’t die, but it’s still serious! _Super_ serious! You _can’t break it_!”

“I won’t,” Levi said, his voice back to its usual quiet tone, though he was still red and sweaty, which gave away how tired he actually was.

You got back to your feet, Levi following your lead as usual, falling into place behind you as you started to cross the playground. “C’mon, I’m tired–we can get something to drink at my house. This time you can meet my mom, so she doesn’t think you’re an imaginary fr–”

You looked over your shoulder to give him a smile at the laughable fact your mother thought he wasn’t real, your step and smile both faltering once you saw there was no one behind you. Not a trace.

Levi was gone again. Like he’d never been there to start with.

* * *

_***Levi POV*** _

“Hey, Runt, you better still be paying attention.”

Levi was thrown off for a brief moment, re-orienting himself as his world went from bright with warm weather and a cool breeze in fresh air to dark, dim, and full of the stench of the Underground once more. All in the literal blink of an eye. One moment he was in the sunlight with Y/N in front of him, turning to look at him as she spoke, the next, he was gazing in the Underground’s dingy light at Kenny, who stood gazing at him with a sharp, disapproving eye, probably seeing some sort of confusion or distance in his eyes. Now that he thought about it, Kenny had been about to turn around to look at him when he’d suddenly found himself on the surface with Y/N…which meant he’d at least seen what Kenny was showing him…

“I am,” Levi answered almost defensively, straightening up and stepping forward. “I can do it.”

Kenny studied him from head to toe, flipping the knife around to offer it handle first to Levi. “All right, hot shot, if you’re paying such great attention, you’d better be able t’do it on the first try.”

Levi took the knife from him without any hesitation, pushing most of his thoughts about the surface to the back of his mind as he focused on doing the gutting action Kenny’d been showing him before he’d seen Y/N.

The thought that did linger was his promise to go back and see her again.


	4. Friend

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Okay, I know (At least to me) this feels like this slowed down a wee bit, when I was writing this chapter it felt a bit like I was stretching the concept to fit the chapter...so, heads up, the next chapter is going to be time passing. A bunch of short moments over a couple years to sort of bridge the way to the next big event.

_**(One Year Later)** _

**_*Reader’s POV*_ **

Your fingers flexed around the slick plastic pouch that was pressed against your throbbing forehead, the freezing pouch getting gradually harder and harder to hold as your fingers grew painfully numb and the ice that had kept the pouch solid melted against the heat of your forehead. Your other hand held one half of a break-in-two popsicle, sucking mindlessly on the frozen treat to sooth the second pain on your lip. Your foot scraped idly at the dirt as you sat on the last step of the back door stairs, nose starting to get runny with the cold of the popsicle, ice pack, and the slight chill in the air…also because your tears had been happening off and on for the past couple of hours. The sun was also high in the sky, blazing down on you and making you have to squint slightly against the light if you wanted to look anywhere but down.

Inside, you could hear your mom still on the phone, still yelling at whoever she was talking to from the school. At least out here she was a little muffled, not as loud as she’d been in the house up in your room. You didn’t want to be around while she was yelling, even if she wasn’t angry at you, which was why you’d opted to be chilly on the steps instead of tucked into your bed like your mom would probably prefer.

“It’s your job to take care of my kid while she’s at _your_ school, what the hell are all your teachers doing on the playground if _this_ is happening on a daily basis?” you heard her shouting inside, and you felt yourself start to curl up like a turtle trying to retreat into its shell.

_I wish Dad was here…_

Frankly, you weren’t even supposed to be home right now. You were _supposed_ to be sitting in class with Ms. Richardson for math time…or maybe it was time for reading by now. Either way, school was still in session, but you were home early because during recess, while about to go down the metal slide on the playground, one of the other kids had pushed you hard enough you’d tipped forward, slammed your head against the slide, and…well…the next thing you remembered was your mother looking down at you. You didn’t remember where you were when you came to, either, just your mom looking at you and the light being a little too bright as you asked why she was there. After a confusing blur of events you couldn’t get straight or remember details for other than you thought a doctor _might_ have been involved because you remembered a man in a white coat and the crinkle of tissue paper, you’d found yourself here, on the steps, listening to your mother scream inside because you had nothing else to do.

_A friend would be nice, too. I don’t have any of those at school…_

“What the hell happened to you?”

You jumped at the unexpected voice directly in front of you, looking up sharply and wincing when it made your head swim, but still able to make out the familiar boy standing in front of you. You must not have noticed him walk up to you because your head had been down…

Levi looked even better than the last time you’d seen him. His skin didn’t look sunken in anymore, though he was still pale. Instead of a ragged mess, he’d finally gotten a haircut, black strands of hair falling just past his ears and a little longer in the back, just above the nape of his neck, the rest shaved down. His clothes were cleaner–still dirty, but no longer torn, frayed, and far larger than he was–and while there still seemed to be dirt and dust clinging to him, he seemed cleaner, too.

For a moment, you couldn’t help but wonder why he wasn’t at school. Was he homeschooled? He hadn’t seemed worried about school the first time you’d seen him, so maybe that was the case. Too bad…you could really use a friend like him at school, especially with how bad things were getting.

“Was it those two assholes again?”

Remembering Levi had asked you a question, you blinked, noticing that your hand had started to fall in surprise and Levi’s gaze had lifted towards the discolored goose-egg on your forehead before you covered it up again with the ice pack. You shook your head _slowly_ , taking the popsicle out of your mouth so you could answer him, though you kept the cool treat resting over the split in your lip from two days ago that had been re-opened with recent events.

“Those are bad words,” you said disapprovingly. Levi only rolled his eyes, so you chose to answer his question, still sulking. “No, they stopped picking on me after you pushed them,” you said softly.

Inside, your mom’s voice rose considerably to what was basically a scream, making you wince and Levi look back towards the house.

“A court case is what’s about to happen! My kid’s been coming home with bruises and cuts and scrapes for two years, it’s been getting _worse_ , not better like you kept telling me it would! Your recess monitors aren’t doing anything, they’re sitting there _watching_ and _letting_ the other kids get away with this bullshit! None of this should have gotten this far–I shouldn’t have to pull her out of school to take my _unconscious daughter_ to a doctor–!”

“The kids at school are getting worse…” you said quietly, your mother’s voice growing more muffled as she paced away from the back door again. Levi’s eyes seemed to get harder, suddenly studying you up and down, and you squirmed under his gaze, subconsciously tugging at the pant leg of your shorts to try and hide the large bruise that covered the sensitive skin of the back of your leg behind your knee. It was older, like the split lip, but still discolored and obvious–the spot where Serenity had kicked with her steel toed boots until you’d pushed her away. You didn’t think you managed to hide it quickly enough, cause Levi’s gaze seemed to narrow.

“Aren’t you fighting back?” As you shook your head no, his gaze seemed to harden a little more. “Why not?” he asked with surprising force.

“I’ve tried,” you said defensively, rubbing gently and absentmindedly at the bruise on your leg. After you’d pushed Serenity away with that self defense move your father taught you, you’d ran, not wanting to get kicked with those boots in a fight. More specifically, you ran towards the recess monitor who’d been watching to get Serenity in trouble for hurting you. Instead, you got in trouble for pushing another kid on the playground and got detention and recess revoked for a while. Your eyes burned with angry, frustrated tears at the memory that you pushed down, the words ‘only babies cry’ ringing in your ears. “Even if I just push someone off me, I get in trouble with the adults.”

“Who gives a shit what the adults say? _Make_ them leave you alone so you don’t get hurt.”

It wasn’t that simple. Maybe with those two boys Levi shoved it had been, but this was different.

“If I do, the school’ll have an excuse to kick me out. Mom hasn’t moved me to a different school cause she says this is the best one. She had to try really hard to get me in, even though the school didn’t want to. I can’t get kicked out cause Mom and Dad want me to do really good in school. They say since I’m smart, I have a chance to do better than them…so I can’t get in trouble, which means I can’t fight back.”

Maybe that’s why they all pick on me…cause they see I won’t fight back…

“Tch,” Levi let out a long sigh, hand raking through his hair as he sat down on the steps next to you. “If they’re anything like those idiots from before, it would only take one time to make them leave you alone.”

With all the problems at school, it might only take one time to get you kicked out.

You shrugged, resting your elbow on your good knee as your arm started to hurt from holding the ice pack against your forehead for so long. “It doesn’t matter. Mom found out my teacher’s trying to fail me on purpose, and started talking about schooling me at home. I think she’s gonna do it after this.”

Right now, however, you really didn’t want to be talking or thinking about any of this. Levi always looked so serious or hesitant. You liked seeing him smile, though–you liked getting him to play with you, to have some fun. He never knew the games you wanted to play, and you always had to teach them to him, but when you did manage to get him to loosen up and play, it made you feel…proud, for some reason.

Deciding you needed to change the subject away from the sad things, you put down your ice pack, ignoring how your head throbbed as you reached for the other half of your popsicle all wrapped safely in the white wrapping, pulling it out and offering it to Levi with a small smile.

* * *

**_*Levi’s POV*_ **

Levi carefully took the bright red treat that matched the one Y/N had been sucking on, holding it awkwardly for a few seconds. It felt…cold. Freezing. How the hell was there something this cold in weather this warm?

“You look much better,” she said after he’d taken it from her, her voice sounding far more cheerful this time…though it seemed a little forced.

Levi studied her. The small smile she gave him despite the sad look in her eyes, the multicolored goose egg that swelled across at least three-fourths of her forehead, the reopened split lip that might have been bleeding still if she wasn’t holding the red frozen treat against her lip. He’d seen her flinch when her mother shouted loud enough to be heard from inside. She’d been hunched over, curled into herself on the step when Levi first realized where he was and spotted her. He wasn’t used to seeing her to timid–usually she’d been right in his face with all her upbeat intensity, and he didn’t like seeing her shrinking away because she was in pain.

She wanted to try and go back to being her usual upbeat self. That was what she was trying to do by switching the topic back towards him and away from her. She was asking him to stop talking about what was happening, and to help her be her usual self.

Though it made him wonder…if she was still in pain, if she was still upset, yet she was still able to be upbeat and happy…was that really who she was? Was it a front?

He’d play along. If it helped her feel better for a while, then all right.

“Can’t say the same for you,” he returned flatly. She looked taken aback for the first second, and Levi worried he hadn’t made it clear he was joking and had hurt her feelings.

Thankfully, she broke into a brighter smile, laughing partially from surprise, and partially out of real amusement.

“This? Whatever, I’m pretty,” she said cheerfully, though the smile didn’t quite reach her eyes as she said it. She didn’t really believe it, then. She was simply returning the banter, looking away and sucking on the frozen treat again. She hadn’t told him what it was called yet…

Tentatively, Levi finally mirrored her action. It was freezing cold, but sweet, like some kind of fruit, melting slowly in his mouth like it was turning into a refreshing cold juice. He attempted biting down on it, but a jarring chill shot through his teeth and down his spine when he tried, promptly stopping him from trying to bite it again and reverting back to letting it slowly melt in his mouth.

He liked it. It was sweeter than anything he was used to, yes, but still good.

A companionable silence settled over them as they both sucked on their matching treats, Y/N now wearing a slight smile. Even though she didn’t want to think about what she’d told him, he still did.

It might not have been anything deadly, but she was still banged up. Levi’d heard her mother say that she was unconscious and had to be brought to a doctor. The last time he’d been here, she’d brushed off the kids picking on her like it wasn’t anything serious, and he’d believed her. She’d been upset, yes, but she’d brushed it off and moved on without much of an outward reaction. Not to mention, he’d easily scared the two kids off. So he’d let it go.

This, on the other hand…this _was_ serious.

Part of him wanted to go and kick their asses himself if she was so insistent she couldn’t do it herself, but he knew that wouldn’t help. Sure, they’d know he was strong, but if he wasn’t there the rest of the time, that wouldn’t stop them from hurting her. It wouldn’t help her.

Frustratingly enough, he could also begrudgingly admit he understood why she felt she couldn’t fight back. It sounded like her parents wanted her to have a better life and were pushing her to get the best education in order to do that. He wasn’t sure how all of this could be _better_ , though–it was already more than he’d ever seen. A large house, obvious luxuries, citizenship on the surface with trees and open grass in the back…but he hadn’t seen much beyond this. Maybe there was more, something her parents wanted attainable for her. They wanted a good life for her, and she was worried about ruining that.

That didn’t mean he thought she should just lay down and let others beat her unconscious.

Levi came out of his thoughts as Y/N moved next to him, setting down the wooden stick that remained after she’d already finished her half of the treat. At the same time, she leaned over and rested her head lightly on his shoulder, the side that the goose egg _wasn’t_ on resting against his shoulder. Levi stiffened at the unexpected contact, unsure how to react or if she wanted something from him in return. She seemed to be curling into herself again after he stiffened, but she didn’t move her head off his shoulder.

“Levi…are we friends?”

Levi glanced down at her, unable to see her face from the way her head was turned.

_Where did that come from?_

“I guess.”

She ducked her head a little lower, and for a moment, Levi thought she was about to pull away, the weight she was putting on his shoulder lessening for a moment.

“I don’t really have anyone else…” she said softly, almost too quiet for him to hear.

_Oh._

Now that he thought about it, he didn’t really have anyone else, either. All he had was Kenny…and Y/N. Kenny wasn’t anything close to the warm or compassionate type that Y/N was. And he rarely saw Y/N. But when he did…

The weight on his shoulder got a little lighter as she started to pull away, and the words rolled from his lips before she could pull away thinking he didn’t really see them as friends or that he was being evasive because he didn’t want to hurt her feelings right now.

“Then we are.”

She paused, processing his statement before she fully rested her head against his shoulder again, scooting a little closer in the process. It wasn’t any kind of contact he was used to, but he tolerated it. It seemed like she needed it, and it was…sort of nice. He liked this. Normally she was dragging him all over the place and he didn’t get the chance to really stop and enjoy the surface. Right now, he was able to sit quietly with her and breathe in the fresh air, feel the warmth of the sunlight he was normally denied, listen to the sounds of birds and rustling trees again as welcoming as a familiar lullaby. This time he was able to revel in the feeling of being on the surface, and this time he wasn’t alone while he did so.

He wanted this–he wanted to live up here on the surface with the sun and fresh air instead of in the rot of the Underground. He wanted to be able to see Y/N more often, whenever he wanted–to be able to beat up those assholes that were picking on her with what Kenny’d taught him, and stay so they knew to leave her alone or they’d get hit again.

What did he have to do to stay up here instead of be stuck below ground?

Before he’d realized it, his entire treat had melted away, all that was left the red-stained, smooth stick it had been attached to. Levi set it beside him on the steps like Y/N had done, still mulling over thoughts of how he could try getting surface citizenship. Kenny would know something, right? Levi didn’t expect the man to help, he always wanted Levi doing things for himself, but maybe he could at least point Levi in the right direction? Levi knew Kenny had been on the surface regularly, so surely there was _something_ Kenny could tell him.

“I’m sorry if this is boring,” Y/N said abruptly, interrupting Levi’s thoughts. “I’d offer to play a game or something, but I feel woozy when I move around too much.”

“That’s okay." He didn’t mind. He was enjoying the quiet, and she was hurt–the last thing he wanted was to make things worse all for some stupid game they didn’t need to play.

She straightened up a moment later, his side feeling chilly now that she suddenly wasn’t leaning against him. "There’s other games we can play, though, sitting right here on the steps!”

“We don’t _have_ to–”

“I’m always having to teach you the games we play, which makes me think you don’t play enough. So yeah, when you’re here, we have to play _something_!” she said in that tone of hers that told him she wasn’t taking no for an answer, a determined pout making her split bottom lip prominent.

Why did he even let her boss him around so much?

_A fresh bread roll was offered to him without hesitation by a hand as small as his own. ”Here. **Here**! It’s for you.”_

Because every time she’d been forceful with him, it hadn’t been to hurt him…but to help him, muscling right past his rougher exterior to get at the heart of what he needed and make it happen. So he let her, because even if she was bossy about it, he tended to enjoy the outcome.

“What are you thinking?” Levi asked, ready for the incoming explanations depending on how many games she wanted to try.

She perked up, clapping her hands together in anticipation. “All right! We could play Double Double This, or have a Thumb War, Or play Simon Says, _or_ we could play Slaps. What do you think?”

What kind of game names were those? Especially that last one, it sounded like the point was to go around smacking people…though considering the state she was in, that probably wasn’t the case. Interesting mental image, though.

Levi shrugged. “I don’t know any of those. Whatever you pick.”

She let out that exasperated sigh of hers–he really didn’t know why she was still surprised when he didn’t know what any of these games were, by now she should have just accepted he wasn’t going to know them. “Okay…we’ll start with Double Double This, cause that might take a little while to learn.”

Turning so they were facing one another, she took Levi’s hands in her own and started to teach him. According to her, the fun _was_ in learning it, and gradually being able to follow the pattern faster and faster. It took him a couple tries, but once he had it down, ironically, it was Y/N that kept messing up, bursting into a fit of giggles before she’d straighten and demand they try again. With how many times they had to start over, Levi was sure that the game was going to become muscle memory.

When she finally stopped messing up the pattern, and after they picked up speed until she couldn’t keep up with how fast Levi was going, she switched games, teaching him the simplistic thumb war game, and doing a few rounds of Simon Says (A game she said was more challenging when you were on your feet and anything was fair game to be called out). They ended on the Slaps game she’d mentioned, her pain apparently forgotten since she was all for playing a game where the objective was to smack the other person’s hand before they could pull away. Another one he was good at, considering his nerves were a lot steadier than hers and he was faster. He could spot her flinches and bluffs, able to keep his hands steady over hers and unmoving except when he really needed to while she squirmed and kept starting to pull her hands back with soft squeaks of nervousness. It was actually sort of fun making her jump or squirm when feinted, making her think he was about to try and smack–always lightly–the back of her hand and watching her squeal and jerk back with a wild whoop of laughter. It kept making the slightest smile ghost across his lips, a thrill going through him as well, even if he was too fast for her to actually land a smack on his hands unless he let her.

Eventually, when Y/N ended up shaking her hands to get rid of the sting from all the times they’d smacked each other’s hands, they stopped playing.

“That was pretty fun,” she said with a grin, still shaking her right hand. “We’ll have to do that one again sometime–you’re real good at it.”

Levi watched her lean back against the steps, picking up the pouch she’d had pressed to her forehead earlier and playing idly with it to keep her hands busy. It sloshed around like it was filled with water…

“Hey, Levi? I never asked you where you live,” she said curiously. “You always just sorta show up, but I don’t know where you came from.”

So she finally asked. She must not know, then. Was her opinion of him going to change, like he’d worried it would the last time he came here? “I live in the Underground.”

He waited in tense anticipation, waiting for some kind of disgusted reaction like he’d been led to believe surfacers would react to him with.

“Underground? Like…like in burrows? Like hobbits in Lord of the Rings?”

He had no idea what she was talking about with that nonsense about hobbits, but for a moment, he honestly thought she was making fun of him. Until his sharp gaze registered the pure confusion on her face as he turned to look at her, ready to make some kind of scathing remark until he saw the look in her eyes. Her brows were crinkled together, nose scrunched up, a thoughtful frown on her face. Did she really not…know what the Underground was? How could she not? Wouldn’t someone have warned her to stay away? Wouldn’t it have come up in that history class she’d told him she was so fond of last time he was here? Half of him wanted to call her out for messing with him, but she looked genuinely confused.

“The Underground,” he repeated, suddenly unsure of how to explain it to her. “It’s…a city, underground. Dark, dirty, lots of…shady people,” he said haltingly. How much did he really want to pop the protective bubble she seemed to be wrapped in? He didn’t want to tell her that he never saw the sun. That everything seemed to be in shades of brown and filth. That rot clung to everything and everything. That you could probably see a dead body every other street.

“So, you have your own house in a city that’s below ground?”

“The city’s below ground, but I don’t have my own house. Kenny and I go wherever there’s space.”

“Who’s Kenny?”

Levi paused. How did he explain _Kenny_? The guy who took him in and taught him how to kill a man in ten different ways as soon as Levi had recovered enough to start learning things? Again, it didn’t feel like something he should tell her.

“He’s…he’s a guy who used to know my mom…that started…” ‘Taking care of’ didn’t sound quite right. Did you really throw someone you were taking care of into knife fights to see how well they did and if they’d learned anything? “Looking after me,” he settled on saying.

This felt awkward. He didn’t really want to be talking about it, and Y/N’s eyes were burning with curiosity, focused entirely on him as he struggled to find the words to explain a situation that had been so rooted in his sense of normal he wouldn’t have considered it strange if he hadn’t been glimpsing Y/N’s life in contrast. Since the moment he’d realized she was naïve to the kind of horrors that he saw day in and day out, he didn’t want her to find out about them. She lived in a peaceful existence that he wanted to live as well, and he was afraid to lift the curtain on his reality for her and risk shattering it with too much knowledge about his harsher world.

“You said you were learning to play the piano?” he asked instead, switching the topic as abruptly as she had earlier. She blinked in surprise, but after a moment of hesitation, nodded. “Have you gotten better?”

Taking the hint, she eased back into lighter conversation, talking about the songs she was learning to play, humming segments of some of the songs out loud, and talking about some of the more complicated keys she was starting to take on. When she started to slow down and run out of things to say about one topic, he’d prompt her to another based off the interests she’d told him about last time. Keeping her talking about the smaller things brought back the peace he’d had before she’d started digging into where he was from. He was able to keep them there, comfortable, listening to her talk about her world, up until the moment he blinked…and once more found himself in the Underground.

It was such a non-event, so sudden with no warning, no exclamation. The most that happened was the sudden silence as he found himself alone under his and Kenny’s room of the week after Y/N had been speaking to him. It felt like some kind of…disrespect, considering how big of a deal for him appearing back in the Underground was. Being shoved back underground with no warning shouldn’t have been so subtle, so quiet. It was like he couldn’t fight back, like he had no control over it–he didn’t, but this just made it even more obvious, more frustrating. He wanted to stay above ground, yet in the literal blink of an eye he kept finding himself kicked back into the rot. He hated it.

He had a friend up there, someone who clearly cared about him. And after getting a few tastes of what life could be like…

_I’m going to find a way to stay up there…one way or another, I’m going to live on the surface._


	5. Flickers In Time

Levi flickered in and out of your life in moments that could be fleeting like the pictures of an old film, or seemingly endless and frozen in time, held in your hands like precious gems.

Friends came and went as you grew older and the social cliques and popularity divided people further and further away at school. It didn’t help that your mother followed through with her threat and pulled you out of school to homeschool you for a year, and your family moved a few times for your father’s job. But despite all the rapid change in the space of a few years, Levi continued to appear at the most unexpected of times, a constant friend despite his inconstant presence. He grew more…distant, the older the two of you became. Not distant like your friends at school had become, simply more…reserved, withdrawn into himself, and wary of the world around him. But you could still get him to relax, get his guard to lower some when he was around you. He always arrived acting far more mature than his age, but you managed to get him to be a /kid/ with you at some point during his visits…

* * *

**_*Levi’s POV*_ **

The trees outside had turned, a palette of oranges, reds, yellows, and lingering remnants of green, clinging to the thinning tree branches or littering the ground like paint spatter. Levi had stared at the colors in silent, wide-eyed fascination when he’d appeared, twirling an orange leaf between two fingers by the stem before Y/N had grabbed him by the arm with a happy exclamation of his name, dragging him deeper into the yard and insisting that he help her rake up a pile of leaves to jump into.

He’d been a little displeased when he saw all that hard work to rake up the yard disappear as she jumped into their pile and sent leaves everywhere, but the shrieked giggles and the wide grin on her face as she rolled around and continued to spread leaves everywhere helped make up for it. Plus, she was perfectly ready and willing to rake up the pile all over again so Levi could try doing the same–apparently she’d seen his skepticism over the point of it all.

He had to admit that there was a sort of childish thrill to jump in and cause an explosion of fluttering autumn colors all around him.

Afterwards, when the leaves were raked up into their final piles and they had picked all the bits of multicolored leaves off of one another, she had dragged him inside raving about caramel apples she said were a Halloween only treat–whatever that was. By now, he’d learned to just go with the strange things she said. They made sense to her, and he didn’t need to understand everything she talked about to enjoy what she was trying to share with him.

This time, it was green apples on sticks with a shining brown glaze and chopped up nuts sprinkled all around it. It was sticky at the same time it was juicy, since the apple was crisp and fresh underneath–sweeter than the things he was used to eating, but not enough to give him a stomach ache, thankfully. They both had the caramel and apple juice all over them when they finished, having to scrub at their faces and fingers afterwards. As with most of the foods and drinks she shared with him when he visited, it was another thing he’d been able to genuinely enjoy, part of him wishing the treat wasn’t seasonal like she’d told him it was so that he could look forward to maybe having one more often when he saw her.

* * *

_***Levi’s POV*** _

The excitement practically oozed from Y/N when he appeared one day, and she dragged him into the house, informing him that her family bought a piano for her to practice with at home. This was something he was more familiar with by proxy, considering all the times she’d talked about learning to play the piano, sometimes at his prompting. As such, as soon as she said she had a piano, for once he knew what he was being dragged into, and he looked forward to it with enough curious excitement that he easily matched her pace. Curiosity and even some excitement radiated from him as they tread into a part of the house that he hadn’t seen since his first visit. At the foot of the stairs was the large living room, and pushed up against the wall was a light brown wooden piece of furniture with ivory white and onyx black keys, and a matching bench pushed underneath.

Y/N let go of his arm long enough to pull out the bench with a brief, frustrated grunt when it got caught on the soft rug, which did in fact cover the entire flooring now that Levi got to look at it. She slid onto the bench with ease and got off again to adjust it, doing this several times until she had it where she wanted it and could reach the pedals at the bottom and seemed to be able to reach the keys. At that point, she turned to look at Levi, who had walked up to the piano to investigate, hand gliding gently over the smooth wood and listening to the hollow _thunk_ of her foot pressing on the peddles underneath as she tried to make sure she could reach everything.

“C’mon, there’s room for both of us. You can turn the pages for me, too!” she said cheerfully as she opened up a thin book that was propped up in the center of the piano above the keys on a built-in stand.

Levi racked his brain for the names of some of the songs she’d said she was learning to play on the piano in all their conversations, dismissing the ones she’s said were really easy, the first songs she’d learned to play. What had been the name of that one song she’d been looking forward to learning?

“Have you learned Furr A Lease yet?” Levi asked as he took a seat next to her on the bench.

Y/N lit up as he mentioned it, flipping through the pages of the book and settling on a specific one that had rows of bars and spots that made no sense to him, but clearly meant something to her. “You remembered! I had my teacher promise to teach me to play Fur Elise as soon as I could recognize all the notes, so I can! You’ll have to turn the page once for me,” she rambled, fingers hovering over and finding their place on the keys as her eyes flickered up towards the pages in front of her. A look of concentration fell across her face, and after a few moments of silence where Levi simply watched her, her fingers pressed down on the keys in semi-practiced movements, and a lovely sound started to fill the air.

Occasionally she pressed a little too hard or too soon on a key, and the sound was thrown off, but Levi was aware that she was learning. Even though it threw him off in the moment, he was still enjoying listening to her play. He could see she was trying hard, and the practice was paying off. The sound was nice and beautiful, and it was gentle, like her.

He only moved when she asked him to turn the page for her. He had to stretch with care to make sure he didn’t get in her way, but he apparently timed it right, because her playing didn’t hitch because of missing notes.

After that, whenever they were inside and she wasn’t intent on having him try something else out, he asked her if there was anything new she’d learned to play on the piano. Every time, she would drag him into the living room like he’d hoped and they would sit down side by side on the bench while she played for him.

* * *

_***Reader’s POV*** _

One of the great things about Levi whenever he showed up was how he was willing to listen. He wasn’t much of a talker, anyway, he never had been. But even though he didn’t speak, and there was a distance as time went by, it wasn’t out of indifference or coldness. He did listen to what you talked about, and considering he was able to recall stuff even from past conversations and ask the occasional meaningful question, you knew he was, in fact, paying attention.

Considering you didn’t have anyone to talk to with some of your interests, it was a breath of fresh air. Even with your parents, some of the things you tried to talk to them about, they started using the mechanical voice, the one that told you that they weren’t really paying attention because they were giving automatic, short responses. And the few people your age that bothered to spend time around you didn’t understand some of the things you wanted to talk about, or gave a blank look and then switched the subject to something else entirely.

With Levi, you could go into depth about rudimentary energy conversion, or basic natural science–the basic stuff taught in elementary science classes that you were developing a stronger and stronger interest in as time passed. Most of the people your age that you knew didn’t really care about science unless they got to see something with fire, something explode, or got to do an activity they could barely put any effort into and goof off for the rest of class.

Even if Levi didn’t understand everything you told him, he tried to. And what you could demonstrate or explain, you did, with Levi paying attention and trying to follow what you were saying to the best of his ability. If he seemed like he wasn’t interested, as you’d been worried a few times by wandering eyes or a general look of disinterest, he usually put those worries to rest with a well-formed question that showed he was paying attention.

When he _did_ lose interest, or perhaps gave up on trying to follow something you were attempting to explain, he would change the subject to something else that you enjoyed. That way the topic was still something you enjoyed and wanted to share, even if it was no longer the one you’d previously been talking about.

Which you understood. It wasn’t for everyone, and he wasn’t going to be _as_ enthusiastic about it as you, no matter how much you talked about or explained things to him. He still did far more than most people you knew, and listened nonetheless.

Though you did notice that one time you talked about studying the human body and naming bones and such, he was already surprisingly knowledgeable, and even helped you study and remember some things you were struggling with. Like remembering the names of bones and their spots in the human body. It wasn’t that you thought he was stupid, it was just that you’d gotten so used to having to explain most of the sciencey things you talked about, it through you for a loop when he was rather knowledgeable about it. Especially the specific parts he was knowledgeable about: arteries and the like.

But, whenever you started to get that worried, pondering look on your face and your mind started to wonder how he knew those kinds of things so well, he usually caught on and managed to direct your attention elsewhere, the touchy subject forgotten before you could dig too deep and realize something unpleasant.

* * *

_***Levi’s POV*** _

Warmth trailed uncomfortably from Levi’s nose and down over his lips, his jacket hanging halfway down the arm that was still clutching the bloodied knife in a tight grip. His eyes weren’t on the almost unconscious man underneath him, but on the tan coat and wide brim hat that was quickly disappearing from sight without so much as a glance back in Levi’s direction. His lips parted, intending to call out to the man, but he disappeared entirely before he could gather the words.

Gone, just like that, without a word from either of them.

And something inside him told him he wasn’t coming back.

His grip slackened slightly on the knife, stunned and still staring in the direction Kenny had disappeared. His smug accomplishment at winning the fight he’d picked with the adult now below him disappeared entirely in the wake of on setting abandonment as the reality of what had just happened settled in, and Levi realized he was now alone in the Underground.

He blinked, and while the lighting didn’t change much, the smell in the air did. The man below him was gone, the ground was different beneath his feet, and the lighting, while still dark, wasn’t from the absence of light from a nonexistent sky. There was no ceiling again, just the trees up above him, and open night sky with the moon and stars glinting around him.

The surface.

Which meant…

He didn’t have to look far. He simply turned his head a little to the side, and there was the wooden playhouse he’d slept in several years ago. Sitting atop it was the familiar form of Y/N, though she was a little hunched over. At the sight of her, Levi instinctively hid his bloodied knife, taking a moment to wipe it off in the grass below him before he put it away where she wouldn’t see it.

Like the day he’d found her sitting on the steps after that incident at the school, there was shouting coming from the house, mainly a woman shouting. There were pauses in between, and if he listened hard enough, he could faintly make out the sound of a man’s voice replying. He couldn’t make out what either of them were saying, but whatever it was, he was sure it was the reason she was hunched over on top of the playhouse like a depressed bird.

Levi pulled out his handkerchief, and barely managed to get it to his nose to wipe away the blood when she finally noticed him. Her posture straightened slightly upon seeing him, though she definitely hunched back over to wipe at her face first before she turned to face him more fully.

“Are you alright? You’re bleeding,” she stated.

Of course concern for his well being was the first thing she said. She was always worrying over him, it seemed. Even when there was clearly something upsetting her, she asked about him, first.

“It’s nothing,” he answered, finished wiping away the blood and secretly hoping it wouldn’t continue to bleed so she wouldn’t continue to fuss over something that equated a scratch for him. He was probably going to look a little rough no matter what he did, considering he was literally just in a fight.

As Levi walked over to the playhouse, Y/N leaned down and fixed his jacked, pulling the shoulder up from his elbow and back where it belonged before Levi could shrug her off and fix it himself. He didn’t need her fussing over him like a mother, because she wasn’t.

Partially sulking, and nowhere near wanting to talk about his own problems right now, Levi decided to draw her attention away from him again as he leaned his back against the side of the playhouse that was now too small for both of them to fit inside.

“You’re upset. What’s going on?” Levi asked, head inclined back towards the house for clarity since they could still hear voices from inside.

Y/N shrank again, and Levi’s gaze settled steadily on her once again. “My dad’s going back overseas,” she said quietly. Levi’s brow furrowed at the mention of _overseas_ , no idea what she was talking about or what that was even supposed to mean. Context clues told him her dad was leaving again.

There seemed to be a lot of that going around right now.

“They’re fighting about it because apparently my dad’s already done his required military service. He doesn’t need to go back, but he is,” she clarified just as softly. “Mom’s insisting that he doesn’t love us enough to stay, and he wouldn’t go if he did.”

Levi looked away as she got especially quiet, and he suspected she might be shedding more tears. At the same time, Kenny’s retreating back flashed through his mind. Sure, Kenny didn’t _love_ him, Levi wasn’t an idiot, he knew that much. But he’d thought, at the very least…well, he hadn’t expected to get abandoned in the street like that. And he felt betrayed because of it.

As much as he thought this would be a good distraction from his harsh reality like it usually was, this was just echoing his own pain right now, and he hated it, a muscle twitching in his jaw as his teeth ground together, and a bit of resentful anger starting to bud inside him towards a man he _hadn’t_ met for making Y/N feel a similar sense of abandonment.

“She’s wrong, though.”

Or maybe not.

Levi looked up in surprise at Y/N’s entire change of tone, which went from small, timid, and hurt to firm determination with a bit of fire he hadn’t seen from her before peeking through. It wasn’t at all what he had expected from her, and she wasn’t done, either, wiping away residual tears as she continued to speak in that firm tone. The way she spoke, it was easy to tell she was venting out frustration that her mother didn’t understand this.

“I know he loves us. Just because he’s going away for a while doesn’t mean he hates us or anything. He’s going because he needs to protect people, it’s what he does, and it’s the right thing to do. It’s scary when he’s gone, and it hurts, but that doesn’t mean he doesn’t love us.”

Levi watched her as she smoothed her hair back with both hands, taking a deep breath before she hopped off the playhouse. He straightened up from his previous position leaning against the playhouse, but before either of them said anything, she suddenly wrapped both of her arms tightly around him. Levi stiffened, pain flaring up in his side where he’d been hit during that fight, hands starting to rise to push her off him in an instinctual reaction, but she was attached to him like a leech, and as his hands met her sides to push her off…

“Thank you for being my friend, Levi,” she murmured into his ear, and Levi paused.

Hesitantly, Levi returned the hug, his hands finding a place on her back as she clung tightly to him. She was warm, and it was comforting to be held like this again since…

Well…he didn’t want to think of how long it had been. Already he felt a slight burn in his eyes, a mess of emotions trying to bubble up and out of his chest as he clung tightly to Y/N in return, wrestling with himself to keep it under control. The hug felt good, but he could tell he was trembling, and with how tightly they were holding one another, surely she could tell as well.

Y/N’s arms loosened slightly, and she started to pull back in concern. “Levi, are you all right?”

Cursing himself for the outward display of weakness the whole time, Levi hugged her a little tighter in response, which gave her enough of a hint that she stopped trying to pull away. Instead, she secured her arms around him again in that comfort he suddenly realized he craved. Every moment he wasn’t here on the surface, he craved the clean air, the warmth of the sun, the energy that oozed off of her and helped lift his spirits, as well as the security he felt while he was here.

If only he had the security of staying. If only he wasn’t so sure that he would simply flicker away again, like every other time. If only this existence didn’t keep slipping through his fingertips like a mirage lost in fog.

If only people stopped flickering out of his life…like Kenny just had.

“Why do people leave?”

The words slipped past his lips before he could get control of himself again, and he cursed his stupidity. Why did people leave–it was a stupid question he already knew the answer to. Because the world was cruel and harsh, full of death and destruction that took without a care, with people that were just as cruel and destructive. And sometimes, when it seemed like people cared…well, he knew better now. Already he was forming another wall to try and keep people out before they could wreak that kind of damage on him again when they left.

Y/N, while she didn’t give him an answer–maybe she didn’t have one, considering her more sheltered existence–still gave him _something_ to hold to. Though he wasn’t sure how concrete the promise really was, considering how they kept fluttering through each other’s lives.

“I won’t leave, Levi. Not really. I’ll always be here when you need me most,” she promised, her words muffled since her face was still buried in his shoulder thanks to the hug. “I’m usually here waiting and looking for you to come back, anyway. You’re the only real friend that’s stayed with me so far.”

* * *

_***Reader’s POV*** _

“What nonsense have you cooked up this time?”

By now you were done being surprised by Levi’s sudden appearances. If they hadn’t started when you were so young, perhaps this wouldn’t be normal to you, and you would wonder how he got into your house and in your room on the second floor without a sound or alerting your parents, but it had never occurred to you to ask those questions in the past, and before enough time passed for you to start asking those kinds of questions, it became normal for you. With Levi’s appearances being normal, you no longer thought it odd.

Not even looking up, you gestured to the chessboard on one side of you and the halfway finished game of solitaire on the other side. “I got grounded for lying, so I’m trying to entertain myself. Thought I would try to play some card games. Or practice some chess.”

For once, Levi didn’t look completely lost as he took a seat across from you in between the two games. It was like you had at long last spoken a language he understood, his eyes flickering between the stalemate on the chessboard and the game of solitaire you were too stubborn to admit defeat with.

It was a little difficult to play against yourself when you knew your opponent self’s every next move.

Levi’s eyes flickered around the room, probably noting the lack of…well, lots of things. Most of the stuff you usually played with. No video games, or movies, or music, or even books. You’d dragged this out of the family game chest for something to do. You weren’t even allowed friends over for a little while. It was your mother’s way of putting the pressure on you to stop lying and tell the truth.

“It must have been a pretty big lie,” Levi commented as his eyes returned to you. His comment earned a bitter snort from you, especially at the dark humor you found in him saying that.

“I wasn’t lying. Just, no one believes me,” you said with a sigh, glancing up at him before you shook away the depressing thoughts. Levi wasn’t always here, and when he was, you never knew how long he would be here. Every time he showed up, you had to make the most of it.

“Come on, this will be much more fun if you play a few games with me. Chess or cards? I am ready to teach,” you said excitedly, leaning forward and planting your palms on the ground as you came closer with a wide smile, gazing at him expectantly as you waited for him to choose.

“I know a few games,” Levi said, nodding towards the cards. You immediately brightened. Could you get right to playing games for once?

“Which ones do you know? War, slapjack, blackjack, rummy, go fish, poker–well, I don’t know how to actually play some of those, I just know they’re card games.”

Levi shrugged. “Basic gambling games. Like poker and blackjack.” A blush started to creep up in your cheeks as you realized he knew the games you didn’t know how to play. His sharp eyes didn’t miss the expression, and a first finally happened between you. “I can teach you.”

You nodded sheepishly, watching as Levi gathered up the cards that had made up your solitaire game and shuffled the cards, starting to explain how to play poker to you as he handled the cards. You never heard him talk longer than short sentences, so hearing him talk about something at length was new for you, and it was your turn to listen to him with quiet attention. He had a rather soothing voice. Steady and fairly low–at least for a boy his age–and occasionally he said his words like a sigh. It gave him a general carefree feel as you listened. If you had been tired, he probably could have lulled you off to sleep just listening to him. It helped that you were paying avid attention to give him the same respect he gave you when you were talking about things you were interested in.

Even though poker was usually played with more people, you and Levi played a mock version of it with CheezIts you swindled from downstairs. Needless to say, Levi was a little…too good at playing poker. For the life of you, you couldn’t read him while playing the game, which meant he won every time. Eventually, you got pouty. Sure, your dad never /let/ you win when you played chess with him to teach you how to really play, but this was ridiculous. At least you could take a few chess pieces off the board with your dad. This was just–just–

You huffed as Levi scooped the pile of CheezIts towards himself once more, looking mildly annoyed at the orange dust he kept having to wipe off his hands as they played. “You’re too good at this game.”

“You’re not good at hiding your expressions. You’re an open book. And you have lots of tells,” he returned bluntly, shuffling the deck once more.

Was he smiling? You could have sworn he just smirked, but it was gone before you could be sure. Dang it! You had to do _something_ to get back at him or this was going to drive you crazy.

“Bah, enough poker for today. I at least know the basics of how to play now. Maybe we could do some chess?” you asked hopefully. Chess was something you knew but he didn’t. You’d have the advantage again. Hopefully you’d be able to beat him a few times and it would satiate your desire for a few victories.

Levi simply sat aside the cards after shuffling them, coming over to the chess board as you set it up. “You’ll have to explain this one,” he said softly, gaze roaming over the starting positions of all the pieces to commit them to memory.

“Don’t worry, you’ll get the hang of it pretty quickly,” you said cheerfully before you started explaining how each piece got to move and the goal of the game.

It was a nice respite from an undeserved punishment while it lasted.

* * *

_***Levi’s POV*** _

For once, he found an upside to living underground, as when he appeared outside, he was almost instantly drenched in an unpleasant feeling with humid, hot air and the sun beating down on him, making him cover his eyes entirely and re-expose himself to the bright sunlight little at a time. At the same time, he shrugged off his jacket, pushing hair out of his face and looking around with a squint for Y/N. She had to be close, she always was.

“Levi!”

Levi turned at the sound of her voice, spotting her as she came out of her house pushing something slender with two wheels along with her, waving her hand excitedly with a fancy bag slung across her chest from shoulder to waist. She hurried over to him, hands guiding the wheels in the proper direction as she approached. She kicked out a metal bar and let the slender thing prop up on it when she reached him.

“I was just going to the store to get some treats–do you want to come?” she asked cheerfully.

“Might as well,” Levi mumbled, his jacket draped over his arm now, though he was considering using it to give himself some shade.

“You can put your jacket in my bike basket, and…um…” She frowned, turning back to look at the bike with a thoughtful look. There was only one weird looking seat, and he was certain both of them were not going to fit on it. “Well, I haven’t done it before, but you can try riding on the handlebars. Or I can try it, if you know how to ride a bike,” she said, looking back at Levi, who was already shaking his head no in response to the upcoming question.

“Handlebars it is,” she said with a nod, swinging her leg over the bike to get situated on the seat and kicking that bar of metal back, balancing the bike on the two tires. Levi put his jacket in the basket at the front, and then hesitated, looking at the way she balanced on the bike and the slender bar with her hands on either end.

This was not going to end well…

“Come on, it’s not that hard. I don’t think so, anyway. And I’m right behind you to keep you from slipping. It might take a few tries while I figure out how to balance with two people, but we’ll figure it out. It would be easier if I had bike pegs, but I don’t, so…”

 _Here goes nothing_ , Levi thought, turning his back to her and putting his hands just inside hers on the handlebars before he jumped up and back, partially landing on his hands. Y/N moved her hands to the very edge, allowing Levi to get his hands out from underneath him and move them off to the side as his ass hung over the edge of the bike. Her chest was pressed against his back as she leaned forward, though, giving him a bit of stability like she said as she leaned forward, head peeking around his shoulder so she could see. Levi kept a tight grip on the bike as she shifted from foot to foot, trying to figure out the balance and keep them from tipping over–something Levi felt happening every time she tried to lift her feet. She was going to make him a nervous wreck if she kept–

Instead of trying to lift her feet again, Y/N just started walking them forward slowly, getting the wheels to start moving instead of trying to balance in place. As they started heading down the brown stone walkway, Levi wondered why she didn’t just move onto the wider black stone street that looked like it would give them more room for error than this narrow brown stone path.

As they started to pick up speed, Y/N suddenly took her feet off the ground again–which Levi knew, because the bike wobbled. “Hold on!” she told him, which was entirely unnecessary–his knuckles were white on the bars as they started to go faster with a push he could feel, and the bike wobbled and veered from side to side as Y/N attempted to steer while Levi had the better grasp on the handlebars. Eventually they managed to find a sort of arrangement, and they were steering mostly in tandem, Levi feeling what direction she was trying to move the handlebars and watching the narrow path in front of them to see what direction they needed to go in order to avoid crashing into something. As they picked up speed and Y/N adjusted to what they were trying to do, the ride grew smoother, the wobbling stopped for the most part, and Levi was able to relax. Mostly.

As they navigated the streets in their precarious arrangement, Levi had to blink sweat out of his eyes and squint against the wind, Y/N occasionally switching which of his sides she was peering around as they continued to go down the path at a speed that he occasionally wondered if she had complete control over. He kept worrying she was going to accidentally swerve into something, or wasn’t going to be able to slow down before taking a corner and they would lose balance.

Finally, _finally_ , she started to slow them down, and skidded to a stop in front of a red brick building with a glass and metal door. Inside he could see bright light from a light source other than fire that he wasn’t familiar with, and a cacophony of brightly colored packages on rows of shelves. Levi hopped off the bike and looked inside with cautious curiosity as Y/N moved the bike over to the wall and lowered that metal bar again, leaning the bike next to the wall out of the way before she approached him.

“I have enough money I’ve saved up to get us some soda and candy, or ice cream. Since it’s hot out, I think ice cream would be better,” she mused as she pulled open the door, letting him go in first.

And she was speaking gibberish again. Well, for the most part. He didn’t know what the soda or ice cream was, but he of course knew what candy was, though he usually didn’t bother with it because it was such a luxury, and that money could be spent on more important things.

And here the difference between him as the Underground dweller and her as the surface dweller was glaring.

There was a man behind a counter off to their left as Y/N came in behind him, a man who immediately eyed Levi was a narrowed look as he took in his ragged appearance and (current) lack of a coin purse or a bag. When Y/N bounded in with her clean-cut appearance and bag that obviously had money in it though, the dirty look eased, though Levi could still feel the man watching him to make sure he didn’t steal anything.

Y/N dragged him towards the back where there were more glass doors keeping certain products inside, with strangely shaped bottles and other containers with more bright colors. “I’m thinking we can choose a drink, and an ice cream, and we can have some over at the conservation site we went to that one time! Wait, no, the ice cream will melt by then…we can have the ice cream as soon as we get outside!” she amended as she brought him to a stop in the back in front of the wall of completely foreign foodstuffs. Levi looked blankly at everything in front of him, completely lost on what he should get. Hell, he’d never even seen half of the materials this place was made out of. He was used to wooden buildings and shelves, to dirt or clay walls with the occasional stone structure, firelight or darkness. He didn’t even seen any flames in this place, yet it was as bright in here as outside, but with more…artificial colors. This place was different enough he was unsettled by it, and he honestly wanted to leave as soon as possible so he could be back somewhere that felt more…comfortable or familiar.

“You haven’t had soda or ice cream before, have you?” Y/N asked, deflating a little as she asked it and realization flashed in her eyes. Levi shook his head, and she turned back to the wall of product with a slight frown, hands on her hips. “Well…what kinds of foods or drinks do you like? I like the really chocolatey stuff, or the fruity stuff. Mom’s always telling me to have less because there’s so much sugar in it.”

“I don’t have a lot of sugar,” Levi said quietly. Too much, and he might get a stomach ache, so he’d like to stay away from something packed full with sugar like she was claiming.

“You probably don’t want soda, then. It’s super sugary and bubbly.”

Well that last part just made him curious…

“Or you can start with something lighter, like Sprite, or ginger ale…or you can have lemonade instead…”

At this point she was just talking to herself, pulling open the door in front of them to start picking up and looking at the bottles. Levi shivered at the surprising blast of cold air, suddenly wishing he had his jacket as she held the door open, continuing to look at the bottles. Levi’s head was on a gradual swivel, taking in the sight of all the different colored packages around him and trying to figure out what everything was. This was _nothing_ like the Underground, it was the exact opposite. He didn’t even recognize anything in here–so far, anyway. You would think they were from entirely different worlds.

“How about this–I’ll get a lemonade and a Sprite, I’ll let you try the Sprite, and if you don’t like it, I’ll just take the Sprite and you can have the lemonade,” she said, handing the two bottles to him and shutting the door, relieving him of that cold that would have been refreshing if it had been brief instead of constantly bombarding him while she held the door open.

The bottles weren’t made of glass, like he would have expected. He had no idea what this was, and he watched the bubbling drink and the yellow drink slosh around inside as she pulled them up to the counter. He was momentarily distracted and forgot she’d mentioned she was getting something else, but was now dragging them over to pay.

“I’d like to buy these two drinks, and two ice cream cones, please!” she said, leaning up against the counter on her tip-toes with Levi just behind her holding the drinks. The man glanced skeptically at Levi again, who just gazed steadily back at him in silence, the two bottles held tightly in his hands. He looked at the boxey…thing, in front of him, touched a few things that made strange noises to Levi, and then turned back to Y/N with a polite smile.

“That’ll be six seventy-four, little missy.”

Y/N dug around in her back, pulling out one faded green paper looking thing, and then another, and then reached back in to pull out a handful of coins, pushing them around in her hand and placing nine coins on the counter, pushing them over to him and dumping the rest into her bag.

“There you go,” she said as the man counted back over what she’d handed him, then put it in a drawer with a nod.

“Go ahead and get your ice cream,” he said, nodding down towards some strange thing at the end of the counter.

Y/N took the bottles from Levi and placed them in her bag, heading over to the thing at the end of the counter, grabbing yet another thing Levi didn’t recognize that was in a cone shape and dark brown, and she reached up and pulled down on a lever. Something thick and light brown came out, with Y/N’s tongue sticking out as she tried carefully to layer it before she pulled the lever back up, stopping the flow and handing it over to Levi.

“That one’s mine, don’t eat it. It might be too sugary for you,” she said before grabbing another cone and doing the same thing at a different spot. This time what came out was clear white, and she managed to be a little neater with what she was doing before she handed that one to Levi and took the brown one from him.

“Have a nice day,” the man called automatically as they passed the counter for the door.

“You too!” Y/N called, and then they left, re-entering the heat of the outside world.

Levi simply stared at the treat she’d put in his hands, seeing it start to glisten in the sun and able to feel how surprisingly cold it was. Like those red things she’d given him that one time. Beside him, Y/N started licking hers, apparently doing so in a very specific way to try and keep it from melting past her fingers, since she had to catch a few drops that started to trickle past the edge. Levi hesitantly followed suit, unsure if it was something he would like…

It was freezing cold, and sweet, but not so much that he pulled back. It tasted…well…he wasn’t sure how to describe it. It was good, though. And once more, he found himself associating something he was experiencing on the surface with _clean_ because oddly enough that was the best he could do for describing the ice cream, as she’d called it.

Following her lead on how to eat it and knowing better than to bite into it after his experience with the red frozen treat, the two of them leaned against the wall and ate their ice cream until all that was left was the cone. Apparently that was an edible thing, since she crunched right through it and quickly ate it, too. It tasted similar to a cookie, actually, as he ate it. Not sweet like the ice cream, and a nice crunchy compliment.

When they were done with their ice cream, Y/N retrieved her bike, wheeling it around so it was facing the direction they’d come from. “All right–to the conservation site,” she said cheerfully, finding her balance on the bike again as Levi grumbled under his breath, reluctantly resuming the position on the handlebars.

Next time she better come up with a better way to travel, because he wasn’t too keen on this arrangement.

Their wobbly trip was longer this time, and more laborious considering this time she had to bike them up a hill this time, which she gave up on not even halfway through when she almost veered and lost balance while trying to struggle up the hill.

“All right, this isn’t going to work, we’re walking up this hill,” she huffed, waiting for Levi to hop off before she got off as well, walking beside the bike and guiding it by the handlebars.

“Well, at least most of the distance was easier to cover,” she said with a sigh, reaching into her pack and handing him the Sprite bottle as they reached the crest of the hill. It was somewhat nostalgic, coming back up here, with the memory of the long grass, the meadow and the pond with the berries and the wildlife. The only thing that was missing was slightly more forgiving weather and her carrying him, which he wasn’t about to let her do since he was perfectly capable of walking himself this time.

“I can actually swim, now, so we could jump in the pond. Mom wouldn’t be too happy with me getting my clothes wet, but it would be fun!” she suggested cheerfully.

“I can’t swim,” Levi returned bluntly. He’d most likely just be watching her bob around the entire time if she went through with that.

“Dang it…well, we can just stick our feet in the water, again, then,” she said, easily brushing off the disappointment as they crested the hill and she guided her bike off to the side into the rocks. Kicking the metal bar to lean it against again, she left it on the side of the road, pushing aside grass that wasn’t as tall as he remembered and gesturing for him to follow her once more to the pond.

Just like they had before, they dangled their feet in the water, and Levi took the chance to clean up any traces of ice cream that might have lingered on his face and wash away any dirt on his person. Meanwhile, Y/N was simply playing with the bottle of lemonade, watching him and waiting expectantly for him to try the Sprite so she knew if they had to switch drinks or not. Once Levi felt relatively clean, he followed the instructions of the little white arrows painted on top of the lid and twisted it open, hearing the bottle hiss at him as the air escaped and the drink inside bubbled drastically before settling down again. He glanced at Y/N, who was still waiting for him to try it, and, based off his past experience of trying the foods and drinks she gave him, started small with a little sip.

He pulled back a bit from the bottle, unsure how he felt about it. It was clear and sharp and refreshing, but the bubbles…well, he wasn’t used to his drinks being fizzy, and it threw him off. Maybe he would adjust to it? He’d probably ask for something more normal if they did this again, though.

Seeing that Levi was keeping his bottle, Y/N happily started on her own drink, taking big gulps before putting the lid back on and throwing herself back on the ground with a pleased sigh.

“I love summer,” she said, eyes closed as she soaked in the heat from the sun’s rays. Levi stayed quiet, watching the birds across the pond hoping around and pecking at the ground in search of bugs or worms. The water rippled occasionally from small fish coming close to the surface, and the breeze ruffled his hair and cooled him down slightly from the heat of the sun. He felt like a little kid again, looking around at a bright and new world.

Well, technically he still was a kid, but really, he’d grown up a long time ago. Yet every time he came up here…he felt like a kid again. And he felt much lighter and carefree. It just made him all the more determined to find his way to the surface.

* * *

_***Reader’s POV*** _

It was dark and damp in the place that you were hiding, your sobbing echoing around the large metal tube and a small trickle of water at the bottom getting parts of your pants and shoes wet. It smelled musty and terrible down here, and you’d be colder if it wasn’t for the medium sized dog that was pressed against your side and partially in your lap. Your greyhound black lab Sabrina was attempting to comfort you, giving a few licks on your cheeks.

It was the middle of the night, and you were tucked away in a storm drain, cold night air whistling down the tunneled space. You’d been down here for a while now, and you didn’t know what to do. You were lost, practically alone, hungry, and scared, and it was your own doing.

Footsteps echoed down the storm drain, splashing water with each step, and you scrambled to your feet, ready to bolt from the stranger in the drain.

“Why are you down here?”

You relaxed considerably at the familiar voice, wiping the tears from your face as he drew close enough for you to make out features in the dim light provided by your flashlight. “Levi?” you said with another sniffle. Sabrina got on all fours and put herself between you and the stranger, starting to growl and causing Levi to pause before you pet her head and neck to calm her down and told her to sit and settle. She calmed down and allowed Levi to draw closer, though he was much more careful now.

You were still mid distraught crying, but he’d asked what was happening, and this was your chance to ask for some help and get what was happening off of your chest. After a few more sniffles and wiping at your tears to get yourself under control enough you could speak again, you attempted to explain what you were doing crying in a storm drain with a dog in the middle of the night.

“My parents are splitting up. I want to stay with my dad, but I’m going with my mom cause I’m apparently too young to decide. And I thought…I thought if I-I ran away…” God, now that you were saying it out loud, you could hear how stupid this whole idea had been. “That they might get back together while they were looking for me,” you finished in a very small voice.

You’d done it in a distraught panic, honestly. Clearly you didn’t have enough food smuggled into your backpack, because you were already out of food. You’d at least thought protection, which ended up coming in the form of Sabrina and a tiny pocket knife you got from your grandfather a year ago. Now you were here with five bucks, a dog, a pocket knife, no food, no blankets or pillows, a stuffed animal, a book, a game, and the feeling that you were absolutely–

“Are you stupid?”

You blinked in surprise when you heard Levi say it aloud, immediately blushing and hiding your face in shame as he said the very thing you’d come to realize but hadn’t wanted to admit out loud. This whole idea had been a stupid plan, and you’d executed it horribly, resulting in this _mess_.

“For someone so smart, it was stupid thinking running away was going to solve your problem,” he continued to scold you, coming to a stop just beside you and looking down on you with you could only assume to be some harsh judgment. “All running from your problems is going to do is make things worse. Your parents aren’t going to magically get back together because you’re missing. They’ll likely fight more.”

You hated how right he was. They were probably blaming each other, if you knew them well enough. This was really something you should have thought through before bolting when you did. You were curling into yourself with every word he said, and as much as you hated hearing him say it, you knew he was right, and he had a point. You never should have tried running from your problems. You should have tried to say something and made them listen. Running was only making things worse for everyone.

You felt his foot kick you–not hard enough to be mean or painful, but enough to get you to move and look up at him, tear streaks still on your face. “Are you going to sit there feeling sorry for yourself, or are you going to get up and head home?”

You wiped your face one more time, getting shakily to your feet. Your dog followed suit, standing expectantly at your side as you gathered your mostly empty bag. You didn’t have anything else, so you were ready for a walk of shame back home. There was only one problem.

“I don’t know how to get there. I got lost. And…and I’ve overheard Mom and Dad talking about a white van going around taking kids, so…That’s why I’ve been down here. Once I didn’t know where I was,” you said in a quiet voice Suddenly very aware of the terrible situation you’d put yourself in.

Levi was staring hard at you. His expression was blank, and he was still, but you could see him processing the information and deciding what to do next. Suddenly, he reached out and grasped your wrist, pulling you forward and towards the mouth of the storm drain.

“Standing around feeling sorry for yourself won’t get you anywhere,” he muttered, dragging you along with Sabrina following on her leash. “You can recognize the area your house is in, right?”

You nodded hesitantly. Moving to the suburbs had its drawbacks. No more were you surrounded by diverse streets, houses, and buildings–everything here was uniform, with rows of streets and houses that looked identical to you.

But what he said about feeling sorry about yourself was also right. So instead of thinking of what you couldn’t do, you wracked your brain for what you could do. You knew the name of the section of houses you stayed in, and what the park looked like, and the number on your house. You could also recognize one of the biking paths that ran along the edge of the housing area. So you had some landmarks you could recognize. If all else failed, there was the pool center or the school that you could recognize without hesitation, and if you waited long enough there, maybe someone could get you home. You knew your phone number. You had options.

Levi got you both to the mouth of the storm drain, and he stopped, staring at the sight in front of him. The last time you’d seen Levi, you’d been living on the east coast. Now you were in the southwest, and you’d gone from a lush green temperate climate to the desert. It was like he’d never seen the desert and was trying to process the entire change of terrain.

“Where the hell…”

Now he was the one just standing there, and you realized that if you’d still been living where you had before, he’d be able to recognize streets and houses and the like as well. He hadn’t been here before–this was all new to him. He was even more lost than you were. At least he was still making an effort.

You tugged him towards the slopes behind you. “That’s definitely not the right way. We have to go back to the houses,” you said, the two of you struggling up the steep slope and back onto the bike path you’d been following aimlessly before ending up here. You hesitated there, swinging your flashlight both ways before choosing to go left. “I’m pretty sure I came from this way. We can follow it until I recognize one of the town names.”

* * *

_***Levi’s POV*** _

Levi let Y/N tell him where he needed to go, considering this was an entirely new area to him. He hadn’t even heard of barren land like this above ground, with just sand stretching out as far as the eye could see, and everything in earthen shades. It was completely different from where she’d been living previously, yet she didn’t seem phased by the strange sights. So, Levi tried to ignore the oddity of the landscape and let her give any signals for where they needed to go as needed. However, he stayed in the lead, holding tightly to her wrist with one hand as she crowded close to him, her dog trailing right behind her as they walked with their sides almost pressed up against one another.

Her comment about kids being taken in the area had him even more on edge than he would have been. Already he was keeping his head on a swivel and his eyes peeled since they were two kids traveling alone at night in a strange place, but her piece of information had his free hand consistently hovering near where he kept his knife on him. At the first sign of trouble, he was ready to draw it to protect her, but he was keeping it concealed for now in order to keep from panicking Y/N. She was already distraught enough over her situation, he didn’t want to upset her anymore. Even now, he could feel her burying her face in his shoulder to try and hide a fresh wave of tears. He didn’t say a word about it, continuing to guide them steadily forward along their path despite the tension in the air.

He still couldn’t believe she’d been foolish enough to get herself in this situation. He’d known she was a little…naïve about the more dangerous parts of the world, but this was just…

Levi let out a soft sigh, reconsidering his stance on popping the protective bubble she seemed to be secured inside. If naivety was going to lead to her doing something like this, maybe she needed a bit of a wake up call. Horrible people lurked in dark places at night, and she was an easy target. He wasn’t, but she was, and she was lucky she hadn’t been snatched in the time she’d been out by herself.

Right now wasn’t the time to disrupt that little protective bubble, though. She was scared enough, shaking and crying as she clung to his arm, the hand he had on her wrist giving it a small squeeze of reassurance in the hopes that it might help calm her down.

They followed the path long enough Levi started to worry that she had no idea where they were still, and was simply leading them even further away from her home. Eventually, though, she pulled on Levi’s arm to get his attention, bringing him to a stop a few paces away from a fork that they had passed that the other path had twisted into an opening in a stone fence that led to rows and rows of identical houses.

“I recognize that name,” she said, pointing towards the words scrawled on a sign just in front of the entrance. “It’s not the area I live in, but it’s close,” she commented, looking far more attentively around the area.

“How close?”

“I think…one over from where my house is. There should be another section that starts with C, and then it’ll be mind. If I can find the park, I’ll know the way home,” she said.

Good, then they were heading the right way.

Levi urged her forward, surprised by how…quiet it was out here. Besides their footsteps, he didn’t really hear any other sounds. Maybe the occasional voice from someone outside their home late at night, or a closing door, but he wasn’t hearing much in the way of wildlife like he would where Y/N had lived before. The loudest thing was their footsteps, which was a little disconcerting.

“You’re not going to do something stupid like this again, are you?” Levi asked as they continued to walk. He just wanted to make sure what he’d said got through her head, and she would know better from now on.

She nodded emphatically at his side, holding a little tighter to him as they continued forward. Well, hopefully she /would/ be a little smarter about this kind of thing in the future. Time would tell.

They continued their trip in relative silence besides Y/N’s occasional sniffles, with Levi staying protectively in front of her the entire way until at long last, after finding their way to the park she’d mentioned, they turned onto the street she said her house was on. There was one of those horseless carriages in front of the house she said was hers, a stark white one with blue markings and something red and blue and clear on top. On either side of the carriage was two men in black uniforms having some solemn discussion over the top of the low carriage. The sight made Y/N shrink beside him, and for a moment, Levi thought it might be trouble. Before he could draw his knife, she spoke up.

“My parents must have called the police,” she mumbled, the embarrassment clear in her voice.

He was pretty sure that wasn’t the uniform of the Military Police, but she didn’t seem to be panicked over the sight of them, just embarrassed and shrinking into herself. He still stayed on guard as they drew closer, the two men noticing them as they drew closer.

“Are you kids lost?” one of them asked while Y/N was still mostly hidden by Levi standing in front of her. However, she stepped out enough to be seen with Sabrina trailing behind her, her cheeks burning red as she spoke in a voice so quiet Levi thought the two might not have heard her at first.

“I live here,” she mumbled.

“Y/N L/N?” the other one asked as they both straightened, getting a better look at her as they drew just a little closer. She nodded, and her grip on Levi’s arm loosened slightly as she moved hesitantly forward, pulling the dog along with her. The two men approached, and Levi tensed, expecting trouble. “Your parents have been worried sick, where have you…”

Y/N pulled out of his grip, apparently perfectly fine with the two strangers in front of her house. Maybe surface police looked different? That didn’t make any sense to him, but she seemed pretty sure, no hesitation as she approached them. For a moment, as Y/N pulled free of Levi’s grip and both of the officers got on either side of her to make sure she was all right and take her inside, their backs were to Levi, only for a moment. But that moment was all it took. In a moment that was becoming quite familiar to him, Levi blinked, and the scene disappeared, and he was standing in the middle of the street in the Underground.

This, he wasn’t okay with. He didn’t even get to see her safely through the door to her home, didn’t even get to make sure those men really were safe. What if they hadn’t been? What if they had been kidnappers or something worse? What if he’d just left her in more danger than he’d found her? He didn’t know enough about the surface to feel confident that she was going to be all right until she walked through the door to her home, and he didn’t get that luxury.

He was going to be worried sick about her until he saw her again, which, hopefully, would be soon. He had to know she was all right.

Levi’s gaze was drawn to one of the stairwells to the surface, and his gaze intensified, expression contemplative.

Perhaps, for once, he could find his way to the surface and look for her himself. If he was careful, he might be able to stay out of reach of the military police above ground long enough to find where she lived. He knew what it looked like now.

But first he had to get up that stairway…

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I'm giving you a heads up....next chapter has some of that mature content, trigger warning stuff in the tags, sooo...yeah.
> 
> Just saying.


	6. Bonds

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> TRIGGER WARNING  
> This is the chapter where some of the tags come into play.  
> More specifically, this is where Rape/Non-Con comes into play. I did my best to water it down, since up to this point the story has been pretty much pure fluff, so I didn't explicitly write it, but it's still pretty clear that's what's happening. I'm stressing the warning now.

**_*Levi’s POV*_ **

Levi’s feet pounded against the street, racing with a glass bottle carefully tucked under his arm. His head throbbed, and his legs were shaking as he ran, but he pressed forward with what strength he had.

He’d been sick the past few days, and while he’d been going out of his way to take care of himself and recover, he’d gotten worse, and needed to get his hands on some medicine to get better. Being underground, that was already a difficult task, with certain common medicines and techniques reserved for the surface and denied the Underground. But, if you knew where to look…

What he needed, unfortunately, was only in one place in the Underground, and he had to steal from one of the particularly dangerous groups in the area. Any other day, he wouldn’t have been too concerned--more at ease if he wasn't alone, but able to get by if he was--but he wasn’t at his best. His sickness was taking its toll physically, making it difficult to do some of his usual tricks. Stealing from them was risky like this, but it was what he needed to do in order to recover.

Turning a corner, Levi grabbed a rake leaning up against one of the buildings, throwing it to the ground behind him as he continued to run. A few moments later, he heard someone scream in pain, and another voice cursing loudly.

“I’ll kill the runt when I get my hands on him!”

Another man appeared up ahead at the mouth of the alley, ready to catch Levi when he tried to blow past him. However, Levi dropped at the last second, sliding along the ground beneath the man’s arm before he staggered to his feet, head spinning again. Probably not the best move to try and pull off while he was sick, but so long as he got back on his feet and kept going, it worked for the most part.

That was two people on his tail, one out of commission if the man who screamed stepped on the rake spikes like Levi suspected he had. He doubted that was all, though. These guys were vindictive, and this medicine was worth a _lot_ underground.

Breathing heavier than he normally would, Levi took a random turn, jumping up on some crates and through a window to take a shortcut through one of the abandoned houses. He dropped down to the floor, raced across the room, jumped through a hole in the wall with a sharp exhale as he narrowly missed broken glass on the ground from a busted bottle, took a sharp left, onto a table, and he was out another window, sliding down the wooden canopy and onto the ground below where he rolled out of the impact. He had to pause to take a few gulps of air, world tilting as he grew dizzy again before he forced himself to his feet at the sound of running footsteps behind him and sprinted forward again, running into someone along the way when his dizziness didn’t give him enough time and calibration to move out of the way.

At this rate, he was going to have to find somewhere to hide and lay low until his pursuers cut their losses and gave up.

Levi popped around a corner, his peripherals catching movement, and he only had enough time to turn his head away and twist his body so his upper back and side took the hit instead of his head, sprawling in the opposite direction before he shakily got back to his feet, already attempting to keep ahead. That blow had done a number on him, though, and he’d lost precious seconds getting back to his feet while reeling. The man was far too close for comfort.

Praying he wouldn’t accidentally smash his prize in the oncoming scuffle, Levi whipped out his knife with his free hand, dropping low and backwards so he could slice at the ankle of the man chasing him. He heard another scream, which told him he’d been successful. Popping back up, Levi swung with the hilt of the blade to have it crack against the now-kneeling man’s skull to disorient him before Levi was off like a shot again. His breathing was deteriorating, breath coming much more labored. He couldn’t keep running like this, not in this state.

The next abandoned house he saw, he entered without hesitation, finding a dark corner and leaning up against the wall, trying to catch his breath and waiting for the dizziness to stop. He slid slightly down the wall, pulling out the glass bottle to make sure it was still in one piece before he hid it under his arm again.

One more breath, two, three…

Levi straightened from the wall and crept quietly towards the back rooms, listening for the sounds of his pursuers. He could hear one or two outside the east side of the house, so if he wanted to sneak by…

Quietly, Levi crept into one of the back rooms on the west side, eyeing how high up the window was and looking for something that wasn’t rotted away he could use to reach the window. He cautiously peeked his head into one of the eastern rooms to see if there was a crate or a chair left in one of the rooms, only to find one of his pursuers trying to quietly lower himself in through the window.

 _Shit_.

Levi leapt forward with his knife, embedding it deep into the back of the man in front of him, digging in and making sure he cut through the spine in the proper place before he dodged back, knowing the dying scream of pain was going to get the attention of the others. He hurried out of the room, intending to race to the front door and get out the more conventional way, but the door swung open, revealing two more pursuers. Trying to backtrack a little, he tried to head back the way he came, but simply ran into a third, who grabbed him by the arm to attempt to restrain him. Levi kicked out with his foot, toes digging into the back side of his knee and causing the man’s legs to start to buckle. He crushed his elbow into the man’s nose, trying to jump around him and back to the window he’d come in, but the other two had reached him by then, one of them swinging a pole hard enough against Levi’s back he sprawled forward. There was an audible crunch, and Levi’s heart dropped as he suddenly felt damp around his side.

The bottle had shattered. And it seemed everyone had heard it.

“You broke it, you imbecile, we were supposed to get it back!” one of them shouted as Levi was kicked in the side. He rolled with the impact to try and get back on his feet and fight back, already feeling grim with his chances between the sickness and the odds of three on one.

“He killed Jacob!” came a shout from the back.

Four on one.

“Well, we’ll have to pay the runt back in kind for all he’s cost us today,” came another voice from the doorway.

Five.

Levi lunged at one of his three immediate pursuers--three because the man he’d kicked and elbowed was already back up--not intending to go down without a fight. If he was quick, he still had a chance to get out of this alive. Lashing out with his knife, he managed to draw blood from one of his attackers, trying to turn and get the second in the same strike, but they had moved out of the way when he attacked the first. Levi swung again at the first, getting him in the side as the second tried to grapple him. He initially shoved him off, but someone else collided against him from behind, another latching onto his arm before he could stab the person behind him with his knife, which they were already trying to pry out of his hand. The next second, a third person’s knee was colliding with his stomach, a fist to the jaw, another to the lower ribcage…

During the blows, a fourth had latched onto his other side, so he was being held by three people while a fourth gave him a good beating until Levi spit up blood. He didn’t take the beating like the man’s personal punching bag. The entire time he was trying to get out of the grip of the men who were restraining him, even disarmed, sick, and beaten as he was.

Once the fourth man had enough beating him up, the one holding started to try and force him down. Levi resisted the best he could, but he wasn’t exactly in the best condition to keep fighting like this. Still, he didn't stop struggling even as he was forced to kneel, head woozy and constitution threatening to fail him with the sick state he was already in with all the fighting he was doing.

One of them fisted his hair and shoved his head down into the dirt. For a moment, the other man lost his grip on Levi's arm with the unexpected switch in position, and he attempted to draw another knife, aiming to slash the arm of the one holding his head into the mud. That hand, however, was snatched out of the air before it could connect, and his arm was slammed back down into the ground, a foot crushing down on his hand to make him release the blade, which he still struggled to keep in his hand.

The man at the front of this group, who had been watching them restrain Levi, started to walk forward with a cluck of his tongue and shake of his head.

"We're going to have to teach you one hell of a lesson about stealing from us, boy. One you'll never forget," he said as he rolled up his sleeves, disappearing from Levi's sight as he walked behind the struggling, barely teenager. The people holding him down shifted, and he heard the sound of a belt being undone.

He went cold, and the sensation wasn't entirely in his head as he prayed he was just going to get a thrashing with the man's belt like a petulant child.

He knew better, though. And he struggled all the harder to break free, all in vain as panic welled up inside him and his brain already seemed to be trying to shut down to spare him the reality of what this was.

He started to squeeze his eyes shut, but stopped himself because he didn't want to give away any other sign of weakness. Didn't want to close his eyes, or let any tears even of anger or frustration slip through, and he was going to do his damndest not to make a sound.

He could at least make sure he robbed them of some of their sick enjoyment.

The foot on his hand stomped down hard, and Levi grit his teeth and choked back a hiss, forced to let go of the knife that was now pried from his grip. Unable to hold to the weapon anymore, Levi's fingers cut into the ground, still trying to rear back or slip through and escape the grip of the men holding him down, but he couldn't _move_.

_This isn't happening. This can't be happening..._

Levi jerked in pain, and a sharp, unbidden cry rent the air.

* * *

**_*Reader's POV*_ **

After moving yet again, this time out of the desert and back to more temperate climates, you still had exploring to do to find all your possible hideaway spots. Spots you could be by yourself and have some peace of mind, as well as spots Levi might find enjoyable. There wasn't a conservation site right down the road from your house, anymore, but if you were willing to make a bit of a trek, there was a forest. Part of it had a walking trail almost no one used, but if you wandered off the beaten path, you could make it to a thicket. Here the noise from town didn't reach you. Here you could faintly hear the water of a nearby creek, and trees towered above to shelter occupants from the sun without cutting away the light. It wasn't a big enough area to have a family barbecue in, but it _was_ big enough for two friends to do whatever they wanted without being disturbed.

Now you'd just have to make sure you had a way to get back to it after you left.

Still tired from all the hiking around and exploring you'd been doing today, you made your way over to the fallen log at the edge of the thicket, sitting down with a tired huff and pulling out a water bottle to chug some of the water and catch your breath.

It was peaceful here. So quiet even you could take a moment to appreciate something you'd taken for granted before moving out to the suburbs in the desert. You hadn't realized how much you missed this.

And now that you thought about it, you must have looked like Levi whenever he came to visit you, looking around so wide eyed and with such interest. Now that you were older, it made you stop to wonder why he always looked at the world around like it was a rare sight for him…

The peaceful atmosphere was suddenly shattered, a sharp cry of pain renting the air as you turned to the sound, shocked to see Levi suddenly lying chest and knees on the ground and the sound of pain coming from _him_. You moved before you could even finish registering the picture in front of you, gaze centered solely on Levi’s face twisted in pain as you hurried over to him. In the back of your mind, it registered that he was partially exposed, but you weren’t looking there, and you’d forgotten about it in the next few seconds.

You reached out to touch him before saying anything, mind focused solely on comforting and failing to realize it was a mistake not to announce your presence first. As soon as you touched him, he swung wildly, and you had to throw yourself back to avoid being hit as Levi struggled violently against...well, nothing. It was just him and you in the clearing. Yet as his head lifted, his eyes were wide, a wild panic in his eyes you’d never seen there before, his breathing heavy.

“Levi, it’s me!” you exclaimed in alarm as you tried to get out of range of his swing. He paused at the sound of your voice, the wild instinct dimming slightly in his eyes as he seemed to realize where he was--or at least, who he was with. He didn’t relax entirely, though. His breathing was still heavy, and he looked shaken as he started to try and get to his feet. He was almost on his feet, trying to make himself presentable with shaking hands and you carefully getting back up from where you’d fallen, when he suddenly dropped again, almost like he’d fainted.

“Levi!”

Except he was still conscious, if the shudders going through his whole body were anything to go by. You tried to reach him before he connected with the ground, but were only partially successful, Levi’s flailing body suddenly pulled partially in your embrace. Was he having a seizure? Weren’t you supposed to hold seizing people down so they didn’t hurt themselves? But something told you that was _not_ the thing to do here, it didn’t seem right.

What were you supposed to do?

You didn’t know what you could do to help.

You didn’t even know what was happening.

You just knew he was scared, and that alone was enough to terrify you.

* * *

**_*Levi's POV*_ **

After he first snapped back to Y/N’s world, everything turned into a confusing blur that he couldn’t make sense of. One moment he was about to suffer through something unspeakable, the next, he was in a serene forest with Y/N. Then, before he could even recover his wits, he felt the pain return, and he was once again pushed into the ground and restrained. He thrashed and tried to escape again, still in vain. He didn’t want to be here, he didn’t want this to be real.

And once more he was in the serene forest, Y/N looking down at him with fear and concern in her eyes, her arms around his chest as he gripped at her arm for stability. No, he didn’t want to be here, either, because he didn’t want her to know, didn’t want her to see this--

Pain lanced through him again, and he was sure that he was bleeding, body arching instinctively against the people holding him down at the shockwave that went through him, fingers digging deep into the dirt--or was it Y/N’s arm?

He couldn’t tell anymore. With his eyes squeezed shut to try and block out the confusing back and forth as well as closed against the pain, Levi grit his teeth and tried to endure, still tried to bite back cries of pain. His head spun from pain and disorientation, as one moment he would be pinned to the ground, and the next he was held up in Y/N’s arms, thrown back and forth like a damn ragdoll, unable to make sense of what was happening besides the pain, whiplash, the reality of what was happening to him in the Underground, and the disorientation as he was thrown between the two starkly different realities.

He knew people were talking, but he couldn’t hear them. He didn’t even get whole words as he flickered between, though sometimes he could hear Y/N’s voice, and other times it was his tormenters in the Underground.

But he knew enough to be certain it was only going to get worse.

* * *

_***Reader’s POV*** _

Levi’s knuckles were white as he clung to you with all his strength, his fingers digging so harshly into the arm he was clinging to that he was drawing blood with no sign of easing his grip. It hurt enough to draw tears of pain, but you were more scared by what was happening with him than some pain in your arm.

His eyes remained tightly shut, his breathing shallow and fast. He was flushed, burning to the touch and looking like he’d been running marathon after marathon. Now that you were looking, he was hurt, too. You could see bruises and blood from cuts, a split lip, blood dribbling from the corner of his mouth, a nasty bruise on his jaw. What made it worse was that although you held him in your arms and he clung tightly to you, he kept struggling. Most notably, he kept tensing up, going so rigid you thought he was going to snap in half, arching, rocking in place, thrashing wildly with his teeth grit painfully as he tried to keep any sounds from slipping through.

He didn’t succeed, though. A gasp, a whimper, a choked off sob, whatever made its way through was always filled with pain, and you were certain that behind those tightly shut eyes he was on the very edge of crying.

You’d never seen him so vulnerable and in so much open pain. As long as you’d known him, he’d always seemed unshakable, like anything could happen and he wouldn’t crack, even when he was starving. Yes, you were old enough to realize the state he had been in when you first met him--by now you had seen pictures of starving people, and that was what Levi had looked like, and it was why he’d scarfed down all the food you’d given him back then without hesitation. Now that you were older, you could look back and figure out his life was far from easy simply from context clues--him showing up with scrapes or bruises or even blood from fights, him being far more world aware than you, him not being familiar with basic luxuries, that one time he mentioned staying with some guy named Kenny wherever they managed to find somewhere to stay…

You had to tighten your grip as Levi thrashed rather violently, head leaned back to avoid getting elbowed in the process. You could barely keep a grip on him with how much he was moving, and still he refused to open his eyes. Panic rose in your chest as he only seemed to get worse, and you still had no idea what was happening.

Levi grunted, eyes fluttering open for the briefest of moments to reveal eyes that didn’t seem able to take in the forest or you, like he was looking past you at something else before they were tightly shut once more. He let loose a sudden barrage of wild flailing to get free, momentarily breaking your grip before he started to choke on nothing--well, nothing that you could see.

It was your breaking point, and any and all sense of caution and rational left you as you desperately cupped his face in your hands, watching him struggle to breathe, struggle to move like something else was restraining him.

“Levi? Levi, look at me--look at me, please!” you pleaded in the voice of the scared child you really were, a child in a situation you didn’t understand far out of your control. He seemed to pale, and for a moment you had the wild thought he might die.

The sound that came out of you next wasn’t a scared child anymore. It was like something...woke up inside you, seeing him in such a precarious state.

“Look at me, Levi!” you commanded in a voice full of an inner strength you hadn’t known you possessed.

* * *

_***Levi’s POV*** _

Y/N’s voice suddenly cracked through all the chaos, a strong-spoken command that was filled with that same inner fire he’d glimpsed that day Kenny left. With it, the chaos momentarily halted. Up until now, one of the reasons he’d kept his eyes shut was because he was afraid he’d open them to see Y/N, but still be in the middle of the nightmare he was currently trapped in. However, the force of her command immediately drew his attention, and for a few moments, the pain stopped being an immediate occurrence, he stopped choking, and he could hear birds, the rustle of trees, and Y/N's trembling breaths. He could feel her arms close to his body, her hands on his face, and he hesitantly opened his eyes to just see...her, with sunlight filtering from above through a canopy of trees.

It would have been a serene scene if it wasn’t for the reality of what was happening, and the fear that filled her eyes, showing him just how terrified she was of what she _could_ see happening.

“Whatever’s happening,” she started in a voice that trembled despite the strength of her command a few seconds ago, “Please, Levi...make it stop. I know you can, because you’re strong, so please...fight back.”

Gaze locked with hers, Levi felt... _something_ spark hot inside him, something that was rapidly growing in strength and causing the tremble in his limbs to steady, his breathing evening out as he took a shaking breath. As he let it back out, a sense of eerie calm settled over his mind, and he...he knew exactly what needed to be done. Just like Kenny had described what felt like so long ago.

His life was at stake, and he needed to _make_ this stop, to _fight back_ so that he could live, so he could protect her. That fear in her eyes…he didn’t want her to have to feel that fear. She didn’t live like this, and he had an inkling that it hadn’t occurred to her what was happening despite all the signs pointing to the obvious. She might not live like this, but that didn’t mean these threats weren’t still out there, and he needed to be able to keep her safe from them.

But in order to keep her safe, to make that fear go away, he had to get free and stop this nightmare before it could go any further.

And he knew how.

As that eerie calm settled deep inside him, that serene world disappeared once again, giving way to the pain, the dirt, and the suffocation on what was choking him. This time, however, his mind was sharp and focused, and he spent no time hesitating as a strength greater than anything he’d known before coursed through his veins.

His head turned to the side as much as he could, and he bit down with full force, tasting blood as it gushed into his mouth. Someone screamed, and as a little of the weight pressing him into the ground disappeared, Levi bucked backwards into the man behind him, body and the back of his skull cracking into his assaulter and sending them reeling as he violently wrenched free of the others still holding him. He was moving like a wild, raging bull instead of the scrawny, pinned youth he’d been seconds before, and the details blurred as Levi acted on pure, unbridled instinct.

His fingers dug relentlessly into flesh, blood soaking his hands and mouth as he clawed and bit at anything that came too close, fists and feet flying through the air whenever there was an opening. He was hot and uncomfortably sticky, but that detail disappeared from his mind as his hands found their way to a blade. With the knowledge of what Kenny had taught him, and this new, knowing strength that coursed through his body, the small blade quickly found its way into flesh, carving, slicing, and striking fatal blows, Levi unfazed by the spray from a bloodier, slower death he gave the one who’d caused the majority of his pain, eviscerating him like Kenny taught him to in his frenzied attack.

Then came the quiet. The haze of pure instinct that guided his attack started to fade, and the world around him started to come back into focus. Every one of his attackers were dead, most cut open by his blade, at least one mauled by Levi’s teeth and hands as he’d fought to get a weapon. The only one still alive was the one grasping at his opened belly and slowly bleeding out. Blood covered Levi, which explained the hot and sticky sensation that he’d registered despite his haze.

With the moment of fighting clarity passing, Levi felt a tremble returning to his hands, and he suddenly found himself fallen to his hands and knees, body trembling as he retched, the realization of what had just happened to him started to sink in with the aftermath. He struggled to force it all down, teeth grinding painfully together as he tried to wall it all in again and regain his senses.

He was so caught up in trying to contain himself again, he didn’t realize there was a breeze in his hair again, didn’t catch the scent of fresh air that would have told him that he wasn’t in the Underground anymore--he was with Y/N again.

But it didn’t register, because he was too concentrated on trying to cope, curled in on himself and trying not to vomit between the violent tremors. He didn’t realize where he was or who he was with until he felt someone beside him, and he heard her saying his name softly, repeatedly, waiting for him to register her presence. 

Hesitantly, Levi raised his head, very aware of the fact he was soaked in blood and sweat and still sick. So much for keeping her perfectly preserved in her little bubble. Her eyes were wide and she was staring at him with a different kind of fear in her eyes. For a moment, he feared she was going to leave him here, that she was going to bolt. Instead, as his gaze met hers, the shadows of what he’d just endured still swimming in his eyes, she gently reached out and touched his back, her other arm reaching out to tenderly take his arm in her hand, helping him to stand.

He didn’t fight or argue or draw back. He simply let her pull him along, guiding him out of the thicket and towards a path in the woods, his steps slow and awkward as the pain came back to the front of his mind, an aching reminder that wouldn’t leave him alone..

“Let’s get you home so you can get clean,” she told him softly, and Levi closed his eyes, leaning slightly against her shoulder as she continued to guide him, a deep relief in his heart over the fact she didn’t shy away from his blood soaked form, even if it had clearly scared her. So far, it didn’t look like she was scared of him.

As they started walking along the path, Y/N took the jacket she’d had tied around her waist in case it got chilly and threw it over his head, also carefully taking off his jacket, turning it inside out in a feeble attempt to hide the bloodstains before tying it around his waist, using the jackets to try and hide the fact that he was covered in blood to draw less attention to themselves. As such, they walked a little faster to try and get where they were going before they drew any attention.

In the back of his mind, Levi knew that this wasn’t the same forest from when they were younger, and he was able to recognize that this trip was taking a while simply to get back to the road. How far from home had she been? She hadn’t run away again, had she? No, it definitely wasn’t that, she would have at least had a pack if she was running.

Eventually they found their way to the brown stone path and black stone street, Y/N getting subconsciously faster in her steps as they started to pass houses, her eyes scanning the surrounding area to keep an eye out for anyone who might spot them. Neither of them spoke, perhaps both of them were too afraid to try and talk about what happened, perhaps they were both too focused on getting out of the public eye and within the safety of her home.

Eventually, she suddenly cut across a large stretch of green grass, her pace suggesting she wanted to break into a jog but she had become aware that Levi was walking funny and couldn’t run yet, not comfortably. “My mom isn’t home--she’s at work right now, so we should be all right for a while,” she explained as she guided them up to a two story white wooden house, opening the first flimsy outwards door before stopping to get her keys, opening the heavier door to get them inside.

“Shoes by the door,” she told him, kicking off her own and putting them on the wooden shoe rack that was sitting on a rug a step or two from the door. Levi complied wordlessly, not about to track mud and blood through the house. Once his shoes were put up, Y/N’s hand dropped down to his, pulling him inside the new house. He didn’t get the chance to register the surroundings much. He knew they were going through the sitting room first, and there was a hallway they were turning into before they were heading up stairs. Y/N pulled the jackets off of him as they went upstairs, and she pushed open another door, leading them into a washroom that looked nothing like Levi had ever seen.

At this rate, he was used to everything that was on the surface being far more advanced than what was underground, and he’d stopped being surprised when he didn’t recognize something while with Y/N.

Immediately, Y/N started rifling through cabinets, throwing the bloodied jackets into an empty basket before she washed any lingering blood off her hands, Levi’s eyebrows raising at the strange waterspout she used to clean up. She pulled out a towel, setting it on the fancy toilet lid before pulling back the curtain to what he assumed was the bathtub.

“I suggest a shower,” she said, ushering him over to stand beside her so she could show him how it worked. “This knob is the hot water, this is the cold. Get it the temperature you want it to be, and then pull up on this silver piece here. Just remember to push it back down when you’re done so the next person to use it doesn’t get surprised. There’s the body wash, the scrubby, and hair wash.”

She turned back to face him, both of them uncomfortably close for a few seconds. “Go ahead and put your clothes in the basket--I’ll wash them before Mom comes home, and find you something to wear in the meantime. I’ll be in my room, it’s just down the hall on the opposite side,” she told him quietly before leaving him alone.

Levi turned back to the shower, peeling the bloodied clothes off himself and putting them in the basket as he’d been told before stepping into the tub and pulling the curtain, looking at the knobs for a few moments before he reached out with his bloodied hands and turned the hot water knob.

Water gushed out of the spout below him, cold at first before it rapidly heated up to something unbearable, and he quickly turned the cold water knob until it was more bearable. When he finally pulled up on the silver piece as indicated, he jumped as the water stopped coming out of the spout and instead rained down on him from above, just as hot as the water from the spout. After the initial shock wore off, he pushed his hair back from his face, putting a hand out to steady himself against the shower wall as he watched the water turn pink, then dark red...most of it wasn’t his blood, but some of it was.

Levi closed his eyes, letting out a shaky breath as his hand pressed up against the wall turned into a fist and he leaned forward, a soft, strangled sound escaping him, trying not to think about it, which was almost impossible to do as blood was being washed from his body and that invasive pain was still prominent, like he could still feel it all happening.

While the water cleansed him of the physical filth, Levi struggled with his own mind, trying to catch his breath as he suddenly found it hard to keep steadily breathing, body shaking again as he tried to press it back down. He started to fold again, leaning down into a crouch, hands formed into fists with his arms wrapped around his middle, trembling and mouth open in a silent...sob? Scream? He wasn’t sure. He just knew he was in pain.

He heard the door to the bathroom open and his head snapped up, the shower water quickly erasing the tears that had been sliding down his cheeks as he watched a shadow moving around.

“It’s just me,” came Y/N’s voice. “I’m just getting the dirty clothes. There’s clean ones on the sink,” she told him, and after a bit more shuffling, she was gone as soon as she’d appeared.

Levi brushed the soaked hair out of his face again, shaking his head to get a grip on himself again as he reached for the washes she’d indicated, getting started on cleaning himself up, which would also give him a chance to take stock of his injuries.

He moved slowly, taking the time to make sure he was cleaned thoroughly, but also letting the hot water soothe his still trembling and tense body, using the time to regather himself so he didn’t keep scaring Y/N, who was already probably scared and worried out of her mind about him.

Of all the ways to one day find out about where he came from and how he lived, this was not what he had in mind.

Eventually, the water started to run cold no matter what he did, so he stopped the flow, getting the towel to dry off and staring into the large, perfectly clear mirror to take stock of himself and see how bad he looked.

He had bruises all over him from the thrashing they’d given him, but mostly around the lower body from the brutal treatment afterwards, and he found out he was still bleeding when he pulled the towel back and found some blood on it. He still had the clammy, pale skin, though that might have been from the sickness he was still suffering from. He had several cuts that had stopped bleeding, including one just below his lip and cuts from the glass bottle shattering around the side of his ribcage, but once he got dressed, Y/N would be none the wiser. He could at least try to shield her from how badly hurt he’d been.

Pulling on the dark clothes she’d left for him on the sink and rearranging his hair, Levi stepped out of the washroom and headed down the rug-covered floor to the door she’d indicated. Surely she wasn’t already done with laundry, was she? All that blood, it would take a while to scrub it clean…

Levi pushed open the bedroom door, and was met with an unexpected sight. Blankets were draped over the bed, chairs, dressers, and desk to form a large makeshift tent, held down with books and the like. Y/N turned around when Levi entered, a timid smile cast his way as she stepped away from an assortment she had on a part of her desk that wasn’t taken up by the makeshift tent in the middle of her room.

"There, that's better," she mused as she walked up to him, a bottle of water in hand which she offered to him.

"What's with the tent?" Levi asked as he took the bottle from her, his voice coming out scratchy and hoarse.

"That, you'll have to go inside and find out. But first…" she turned back to her desk, picking up a small glass bowl with ice cream in it, and something small that rattled when she picked it up. "I got you some ice cream--just a little, since you said super sugary stuff doesn't sit well with you. And I found some painkillers in the medicine cabinet downstairs."

Levi's head perked up at the word _medicine_. Of course--she was a surfacer. If anyone was going to have access to what he needed, it was going to be her.

"I've been sick for a little while. You wouldn't have anything for that, would you?" he asked. She pulled back the rattling tiny bottle with a thoughtful frown, though still handed him the ice cream. As much as it didn't seem like something you ate when you were sick, it was only a little, and it felt relieving against injuries like his split lip after the beating he'd received.

"What kind of sick? Fever, cough, stomach ache?" She rattled off, reaching out to touch his forehead carefully. He was burning up with a fever--he had been for a while, now, not that he'd had the luxury to pay it much mind.

"Fever, headache, dizziness, weakness, chills," he listed off, watching her thumb swipe against the tiny bottle she still held.

"Well, this is aches and pains, fever, headaches...it kinda sounds like the flu. You might just need rest for the other half…" she shifted from side to side, chewing on her lip before setting it down. "You may just need one of those, but I'll see what else we have and if I have something better."

She left the room for a few moments, leaving Levi to find a spot he could sit down and eat his small bowl of ice cream while he waited, eyes still on the makeshift tent. Once the ice cream was gone, he sat the bowl on the desk and got down on his hands and knees so he could crawl inside.

The texture of the ground beneath him changed, as crawling inside revealed that she had lined the entire interior of this tent with pillows and blankets, enough so that it was so soft inside he couldn't feel the hard ground. Suddenly he was small again, wrapped up in the comfort and warmth of the nest she'd made him when they first met.

Crawling all the way inside, Levi found a spot he could comfortably lay down and stretch out, surrounded by soft security, sinking slightly into the fluffy blankets and pillows around him. The utter exhaustion hit him now that he was in such a comfortable place, eyelids fluttering, drooping, almost drifting off…

Y/N returned, crawling into the tent as well, but with a couple things in tow as she wiggled her way up until she was lying directly across Levi, propped up on one arm.

"I couldn't find anything better than this, so we'll stick with the painkillers," she said with a sigh, pushing down on and then twisting the lid to open it and shaking a small white cylindrical thing onto her palm. "One every twelve hours until you recover."

She handed him the little white thing and the water bottle. "I'm assuming you've taken a pill before?"

"No."

She blinked, but showed no more outward surprise. She just nodded. "All right. Well, you swallow them whole. You use the water to make it go down easier," she explained. Levi followed her instructions without hesitation, though he drank a bit more water after the pill went down. "When I'm sick with the flu, Mom tells me its rest, fluids, and medicine for the symptoms."

As she spoke, Y/N grabbed a folded up blanket from a corner of the tent, unfolding it and then throwing it over Levi to cover him up entirely. She was tucking him in like a child. Normally, he'd protest--he wasn't a child, he hadn't been in a long time. But he knew what she was like. She was stubborn, and she wouldn't listen to his protests.

Plus, he was too tired to argue. Tired from the sickness, from the chase and the fight, tired from the toll this whole nightmare had taken on him…

Something cool and damp was draped across his forehead, and Levi started to sit up. "What are you--"

"It's just a washcloth," she reassured him, adjusting it so it would lay comfortably while he was lying down. "It's something my mom used to do when I had a fever."

Levi swallowed, laying back down with his face covered by the blankets and pillows, feeling a burn in his eyes.

_Come here, Levi. It's all right, sweetheart. You'll be alright by morning._

Y/N scooted a little closer. "Levi?" She waited until he hummed in acknowledgement to continue. "Is it okay if I hug you?"

Levi considered it for a moment. He was sick, but she didn't seem worried about catching whatever he had. Then again, she was on the surface where there was good medicine readily available. A sickness like this might have been of no concern to someone who had medicine on hand to treat it.

That, or she was so concerned about him she'd stopped caring if she got sick or not.

"Okay," Levi finally answered in a quiet voice.

Y/N scooted even closer, an arm wrapping gingerly around him while the rest of her snuggled up close to his chest, warm, steady, and constant. Her hand that was lying on his back rubbed gentle circles to comfort him and make him feel safe, the only sound between them the shifting of fabric and their steady breathing.

Before he fell asleep, Levi’s eyes opened just enough he could look down at Y/N, unable to see her face since it was buried in his chest, but still gazing at the top of her head.

What had he done to deserve someone like this in his shitty life?

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Before anyone freaks out on me about the Ackerbond not being with Erwin, I'm riding with the theory that an Ackerman CAN form more than one Ackerbond. And this one is distinctly different from the one he forms with Erwin, anyway.


	7. Revelation

_***Reader's POV*** _

For the first time since Levi first appeared in your life, he didn't disappear shortly after arriving. He stayed with you until his fever finally broke.

Keeping him hidden from your mother was nothing short of a miracle. You didn’t want him getting discovered and sent somewhere else to recover, because what he needed was to be here after what happened to him--he wanted to be here, too, from what you could see.

In order to hide him, he had to stay in your tent the entire time, which you declared your fort to your mother and were allowed to keep as long as it didn’t get in the way, and you washed everything when you were done. That meant you had to shift it off your bed and make it a little smaller, but Levi still had plenty of room, and you could still fit underneath.

You didn’t do much while he was in the tent, though. He _was_ sick, and he spent his time with you recovering, wrapped up in blankets and getting medicine every twelve hours while you kept up a steady stream of water and occasional Gatorade to help him get better. You would crawl into the tent and lay down next to him when you had the time, telling him stories and simply keeping him company. You strategically smuggled him bowls of canned soup when your mom wasn’t home because of work or she had to make a grocery run, so he wasn’t going hungry.

There was one point when his fever got really bad, the point your mom used to tell you was right before it broke when you were sick. You spent the whole time next to him, gently sponging his head and murmuring quiet reassurances and stories to him while he shivered and moved restlessly, occasionally murmuring out feverish nonsense, calming slightly when you would brush the hair from his face. Since it calmed him down, you kept doing it, running your fingers through his hair while you talked softly to him and he rested. With how much he slept in the couple days he was with you, you wondered how much rest he actually got back home.

There were a few heart-stopping moments when you thought your mother might catch you hiding Levi in your room, but you managed to play it off each time, either by claiming you were playing a game in your tent, or hiding Levi under the blankets, or claiming it was a kids only tent, and giants weren’t allowed. Typical kids stuff to keep the tent area off limits.

When Levi’s fever finally broke, he was still out of it and drained, but you could tell by a simple touch on his forehead that he wasn’t burning up anymore. It was a relief, with a pressure lifting off your chest you hadn’t known was there to see that he was going to be okay--at least in regards to his health. You still stayed with him, though, curled up next to him in the tent and even falling asleep there beside him.

When you woke up the morning after his fever broke in the tent, he was gone, and at long last, you finally questioned what happened, and considered the impossibility of his knack of disappearing into thin air. No longer did you think it could have simply been from inattention on your part, or that it was in any way normal. Especially because you knew that he was not in any state to have gotten up and left on his own before you woke up.

So what was happening?

* * *

_***Levi's POV*** _

Levi sat cross-legged in the open space he’d recently managed to find, hands loosely held together in his lap as he gazed down at the grassy ground, sunlight shining down on him from the hole above him. He was lost in his own thoughts, confused and faced with an impossible reality, which was why he’d sought some refuge in a quiet space by himself, complete with fresh air filtering down from the surface.

He’d managed to make it up to the surface. Briefly, but after what happened to him, he was extra determined to force his way to the surface if he had to.

Based off how well Y/N had lived, Levi had assumed that she would be somewhere within Wall Sina, and all he would have to do would be to evade the Military Police long enough to find a street familiar to where she lived. He covered quite a bit of distance looking for her home, or at least something familiar from his time with her. The longer he spent topside, though, the more he realized _nothing_ looked like the place Y/N lived, even at the centermost, opulent part of Sina where the wealthiest lived.

She wasn’t up there. All this time, he’d thought she was somewhere just above his head waiting for him, when really…

Levi let himself get caught and thrown back after that realization. Originally he’d thought if he found her, they might be able to figure something out so he could stay. That went out the window when he realized she wasn’t there. If it wasn’t for the fact that he still wanted to live somewhere other than the Underground, somewhere clean and free of the filth underground, he might have thrown out any idea of going to the surface after realizing it wasn’t anywhere close to what he’d thought it would be.

It was still better than the Underground, and he still wanted to find a way up there. The glaring question remained, though…

Where the hell was Y/N? He knew all that time spent with her wasn’t some strange continuing fever dream--it was real. He couldn’t explain it--how he got there, what sent him there, or even where _there_ was, but he knew it was real, that _she_ was real.

Where was he supposed to go from here?

Levi closed his eyes, running his hand slowly through his hair as he tried to grapple what he knew and figure it out from there. Carriages that didn’t need horses, smooth stone streets, intricate clean water systems, colorful, variety of foods easily on hand, light without fire inside homes…

And how had he gotten there in the first place? When... _it_ was happening, it had been like he was being thrown between reality and a nightmare, except he’d been painfully aware that both were reality. But he hadn’t moved from either spot as he went back and forth. He’d stayed in the same pinned position in one reality, and was held in her arms in another, with no time passing when he’d...jump between the two.

None of this made sense to him. He thought he was going to be sick again, or at the very least give himself a painful migraine.

The smell in the air changed, the breeze and natural sunlight disappeared, and Levi lifted his head instinctually, opening his eyes to find himself cross legged on Y/N’s bedroom floor, looking up at her as she turned from where she’d been getting up from her desk, freezing in place when she saw him just... _sitting_ there.

And the mystery continued.

Anger rose inside him--not at her, more at the situation he found himself in and the complete, nonsensical nature of it all--and he got to his feet before she could react, his eyes stormy.

“What the fuck is this?” Levi snapped, arm spread out to indicate the world around them. Knowing that simple sentence could easily be taken out of context and misconstrued with how out of the blue it was, he pressed on before she could answer the first question. “None of this is _normal_ , it’s not even possible! A person doesn’t blink and find themselves somewhere else entirely--and I don’t even know where _here_ is, because it sure as hell isn’t in the Walls!”

She hesitated in front of him, teeth biting down slightly into her lower lip as she endured his outburst, concern and a reflection of his own confusion in her gaze. “I think we need to talk.”

“You don’t say,” he said bitingly.

She ignored his sour tone, putting her hair up and heading for the door. “C’mon--this is probably a conversation to have in private, and we’ll have a better chance of that if we’re out of the house when my mom comes home,” she said. Levi followed with an impatient air, watching her scribble a note to her mother telling the woman she was going to be at the park before they headed out of the house, Levi falling into step beside her.

“Last time got me thinking about this whole situation, too,” she started quietly as they walked, eyes fixed forward and a small frown on her face. “I still don’t know what happened, and I don’t expect you to tell me, but your sudden appearance and then your later disappearance, whatever happened in that clearing…”

She let out a slow breath, eyes cast downwards for a moment. “When we were younger, I didn’t think anything of it--it was just normal for us, you know? But after that, it was a bit of a rude wake up call. I started thinking about what little you’ve told me about where you’re from and how much you haven’t encountered before.” She turned to meet his gaze. “You said you were from someplace called the Underground, right?”

Levi nodded, gaze fixed steadily on her as he waited for her to get to the point instead of ramble on about a bunch of things he already knew because he’d been the one to experience it or he’d come to the questions on his own.

“Well, I looked into it to see if I could find the place you were talking about. I came up with things like the Underground Railroad, or a bunch of clubs, a general reference to any shady business that isn’t done in broad daylight or to anything that’s done in secret with an exclusive group, a reference to the activities in 1920s Prohibition, shows, shopping centers underground, but I couldn’t find a _place_ called the Underground that was an actual city like you...well, vaguely described. It doesn’t exist.”

“I live there--I’m pretty certain it exists,” Levi deadpanned, all the while trying to figure out what parts of her explanation meant. 1920s? Surely she didn’t mean a decade--they were only in the 800s.

“Yes, for you it does, but here, it _doesn’t_.”

“You’re not making any sense.”

“Okay then--these walls you just mentioned back there--what did you mean by that?”

For some reason, some strange kind of dread was settling in his stomach as they spoke. “Wall Maria, Wall Rose, Wall Sina, the three walls on the surface that keep out the Titans from destroying the rest of humanity.”

Y/N did a full stop, blinking rapidly and visibly leaning back as she processed that information as if she’d never heard of such a thing before. The sinking feeling in Levi’s gut seemed to solidify.

“We are going to come back to _that_ , but for now, proving my point,” she eventually said, resuming her pace. “We have nothing like that. Sure, there’s the Great Wall of China and what’s left of the Berlin wall, but we don’t have any Maria, Rose, Sina, walls. The only titans I can think of are the beings that came before gods in Greek mythology. And I’m pretty sure humanity isn’t on the brink of destruction, because there’s billions worldwide.”

Levi held out a hand to stop her, doing his best to hide just how disturbed he was right now. Once again, he wasn’t recognizing some of the names she threw out, and what she was starting to suggest was crazy talk. “That’s impossible.”

“That’s my point--well, what I’m trying to say is going to sound absolutely insane. I’ve never been so glad in my life to read and watch a bunch of fiction,” she said with a slightly wistful look on her face before turning to face Levi entirely. “I don’t think we’re from the same world--or even the same universe,” she said, throwing her arms out wide.

Levi stared at her for a few moments, long enough that she put her arms down and asked, “What?”

“You’ve lost your damn mind,” he said flatly, turning to walk away and continue down the path. She jogged to catch back up, letting out a frustrated huff.

“I know it sounds crazy, but it’s the only explanation I’ve got--have you got something better?” When Levi hesitated, she plowed forward. “I know you’re real, and you know I’m real--we’ve established that by now. You know where you come from, I know where I come from--and you’ve seen where I live, we’re here right now! So the Underground, these walls, whatever those Titans you mentioned are, they’re real, for you, but they’re not here where I live.”

“This has to be some kind of hallucination,” he muttered, a hand pressed to his forehead. It made sense. Maybe he wasn’t as adjusted as he thought he was, and this was a running hallucination he’d developed in his own mind to help him cope with his shit life.

Though he knew he wasn’t smart enough to come up with half the shit he saw when he was here.

But another world? That was insanity. It couldn’t be possible--it _couldn’t_!

Y/N grabbed his shoulders and made him face her, her face suddenly filled with surprising seriousness. “It’s not a hallucination!” she nearly shouted in a tone much harsher than he thought she might have intended for it to come out. “We’re both real--I can feel you, you can feel me. I’ve taken care of you, and you’ve helped me. We’ve played together, I’ve given you food, I’ve carried you on my back. I’m real, and you know it, just like I _know_ you’re real despite what everyone else says.”

There were angry tears in her eyes, and for a moment, Levi got the sense that there was a lot more going on here with that exclamation than their current discussion. He was going to have to pry into that a little more later, but right now, they had to settle on a reality.

“Say I believe your crazy theory,” he said, easily pushing off her arms with one smooth motion as he spoke. “How the hell am I getting thrown into another world, or another _universe_ , without any time passing in my world? And _why_ , for that matter?”

“Time doesn’t pass in your world when you’re here?” she asked in a puzzled voice. Levi shifted uncomfortably.

“No. Except once,” he muttered, looking away, though he was certain that was an exception and had more to do with bouncing between--

Shit, he was buying into this already, wasn’t he?

“I don’t know how or why, I’m not Einstein, I just know it’s happening,” she said with a huff, starting back on the path again. The forest was coming closer, the same one they’d been in last time he thought, and a part of him recoiled inside at the thought of going back to the clearing.

He really hoped she had more tact than to try and bring them there.

“Also, why the hell aren’t you freaking out about all this? You’re way too calm,” he scowled.

“I’ve had time to go over my theory and come to terms with it. It’s the only explanation I have, so it’s the one I’m going with.”

Levi fell silent, frowning as he walked with her, that sinking feeling in his gut growing more prominent and defined.

If he believed her, and this was all a different world...that meant that no matter how much he clawed and fought his way up the food chain, he wasn’t going to reach this place. All of it was...unattainable, because it didn’t exist in /his/ world, and he never got to stay in this world.

It was fucked up.

And maybe that was part of the reason why he couldn’t accept it.

No, what he couldn’t accept was that he got to be teased with glimpses into another world, of a life he was denied and could never really have. The fucked up parts were the believable parts, what made this easier to swallow.

He could never stay, and there wasn’t anything like this for him to find in his world, so it was something he could never have shoved into his face but always slipping out of his grasp.

It fell perfectly in tune with the shit life he’d had so far.

Y/N grasped his wrist lightly, pulling him in the direction of a forest path. He lightly pulled his wrist free this time, and she turned her head away so he wouldn’t see her reaction. He was still following her into the forest, though--he just wasn’t letting her pull him along like a limp doll.

“I figured now that we know this is what’s happening--what _might_ be happening--” she corrected after seeing the still-doubtful look on his face. If it was their reality, it was going to be a while for Levi to actually swallow it. “We can at least talk to each other about our realities. It might help us figure out what’s going on. Or at least make it more real. And we’ll know more about each other.”

Her tone sounded like she was trying to stay positive, but Levi was currently too caught up in the shitty end of the stick he was left holding while she seemed ecstatic, like she was discovering new land and reading a good book. It made him feel sick. She got all the good parts of this situation, a friend and a discovery, but what did he get? He was the starving man in front of the feast he couldn’t have.

“What’s the fucking point?” he said venomously, and she came to a full halt at his tone, taken aback and--now he could see it-- _hurt_ by his tone. But he pressed on, hurt and angry himself at the unfairness of the situation. “Sure, it’s all great for you, so fucking exciting, but me? My life’s shit. Before I found my way to the surface, I thought _this_ was right there if I tried hard enough, but _now_ \--now you’re telling me it’s a whole ‘nother world. What the fuck is this for me other than the universe showing me more shit I can’t have? What’s the point if I’m just going to keep getting kicked back into the goddamn dirt every time I see this place. It doesn’t even fucking _matter_ , does it?” Levi fumed.

It had to be the most he’d ever spoken to her at once, and here he was using it to shoot barbs at her. But right now he was too mad to care.

Her eyes were downcast, lips pressed together, shoulders slightly hunched. She might have been on the edge of tears. In that moment, he started to regret his barbed words. Yes, he was angry. In the past he’d envied her what she had, but it had always been soothed by the thought that he might be able to reach it in the future. He didn’t have that anymore. So far, he’d always been here in flickers, a few days at the most before he was inevitably sent back to the exact moment he’d left.

What did it matter if he couldn’t stay? What did it matter if nothing changed? This was _her_ reality, she got to stay here, while he was kicked back into the dirt--literally. He hated it, and he thought a part of him might hate her for it.

“It’s still real, though,” she said softly, her voice a mere whisper and trembling with her barely held back tears. “Your time here isn’t any less real. It still counts for something.”

_”...I didn’t want you to be alone…”_

_”I’m happy you came back, Levi.” “Me too.” “You’ll have to go back though, right?” “Yeah.” “Promise you’ll come back, again?” “All Right.”_

_Piano music filtered through the air, soft and gentle, even if it occasionally stuttered or halted under fingers that were still learning._

_“I won’t leave, Levi. Not really. I’ll always be here when you need me most. I’m usually here waiting and looking for you to come back, anyway.”_

_”Let’s get you home so you can get clean.”_

_He was surrounded in warmth and comfort, a hand gently rubbing his back, another small body curled up close to him, offering him companionship and care..._

_”You’re going to be okay...I’m right here…_

Levi looked away.

She was right. He was just letting his anger get the best of him. It still mattered. Every bit of it. Or was he really going to say that every kindness she’d extended to him meant nothing because she happened to--damn, he was admitting it--be from another world? No. Those kindnesses had meant everything to him--especially when they first met. When Kenny left. And recently…

“I’m sorry,” he muttered, feeling chastised by himself for speaking so harshly to her and making her tear up. Shit, what was wrong with him?

She didn’t say anything. The silence stretched a little longer between them before she spoke up again.

“Tell me about where you come from?” she asked timidly, and Levi looked at her doubtfully again, thinking of all those times he’d stayed quiet to shelter her from his reality. Now he knew even the surface was worse than anything she had to deal with here, after that comment about humanity _not_ being on the brink of extinction and Titans not even being a reality here.

“I want to understand…” she hesitated, withdrew into herself a little, and backtracked to rephrase her words. What had she been about to say? “Maybe if I know more about where you’re from, I can understand why this is difficult for you? I don’t want to be insensitive or ignorant, I just...I just want to help. And I can help better if I know,” she finished in a tiny voice.

“You don’t want to know about where I’m from--” Levi started to say dismissively, but she cut him off with that rare spark he kept glimpsing returning for a brief moment.

“I do,” she said firmly, a hard edge in her eyes before her features softened again. “Besides, if you explain what your world is like, it might make explaining mine a little easier.”

She always charged in headfirst with the emotional stuff before adding the emotional stuff to try and be convincing.

He didn’t like the thought of exposing her to the dark underbelly that was his world, but she was so earnest--she really did want to understand, and as long as he’d known her, she’d always wanted to help in some way or another. She’d always been helpful and caring, and he really hoped that talking about a place as dark as where he came from wasn’t going to taint that.

“Fine.”

He would talk about it, but he was still going to try and water it down for her sake. She didn’t need to know the gritty details, just the general gist of what his world was like. He could spend his time focusing on the technical parts and gloss over the graphicness of his life.

The two of them kept walking down the path until they found a stump to sit on just off the path, sitting side by side on the rim of the stump as they started to talk about their worlds, where they were from, what it was like, and answered questions from one another about certain details or things they had.

* * *

He felt shaken after their conversation.

The way she talked about her world, it made it look like Levi was stuck in the stone age or something. Machines that did chores for them and performed crafting tasks that for him there were entire professional trades revolving around, transportation without horses, boats that flew in the air, lights that ran on some kind of power like lightning, machines to control the temperature inside houses, a world brimming with people and no man eating creatures bent on destroying them.

Besides man itself.

Hell, he began to wonder why there would be any interest in his world once he realized just how _behind_ his world was. Of course it was a different world, but _still_ , it was even less interesting when Levi was trapped below ground and couldn’t tell her much about the world above him besides what he’d heard in stories and the brief glimpse he got running around trying to find her.

She _did_ slip up and say that it was like something out of one of her dark fantasy books, but she’d caught how insensitive that had sounded and quickly apologized, cheeks burning.

There was plenty to talk about and discover about their worlds, but after a while, their throats started to hurt from all the talking, and they grew quiet. Leaning against one another on the stump, Levi gazed up at the canopy of trees above them, listening to the sounds of the forest and Y/N’s breathing beside him.

“Levi?” she eventually asked in a soft voice. He shifted slightly to look at her, wondering what she would ask about next.

“What happened? The last time you where here?” she asked in a voice barely above a whisper.

“You don’t want to know,” he said bluntly, voice coming off stiff and distant.

“I’m not stupid. I know it was bad. I know you got really hurt...and there’s only one way there was that much blood afterwards--”

“Stop asking,” Levi cut her off, pulling away and standing up again to walk a few steps away and try and cool down. Not only did he not want her to know what had happened, to not realize where he lived was _that_ dangerous, but he didn’t want to be thinking about it, he didn’t want to be reliving it.

He turned back to face her, and she’d pulled her knees up to her chest, looking every bit the kid that they both still were. Though they sure weren’t acting like it. His situation explained itself. Hers? She was starting to show a maturity beyond her age with how she’d handled the last experience.

Now that he thought about it...even when they’d been smaller, with all the times she’d asked to play games and have fun, she’d had an...awareness, about her. There was the discussion they’d had after she’d been beat up at school, and the time when her parents were fighting about her father going back to war. Hell, she’d said it herself when they were younger that she’d noticed he didn’t play enough. Just because she was always acting carefree and playful around him didn’t mean she lacked maturity. She might have been doing it for his sake this entire time.

He needed to give her more credit. He still wasn’t going to willingly dump the fucked up parts of his life on her, but at least he could be a little wiser about her maturity and know better than to treat her like an ignorant child, even by accident.

“Okay,” she relented, her voice still low and soft. “But Levi? If you ever need to talk, or anything else, I’ll be here...okay?”

Levi didn’t answer or nod, looking back at the ground. He knew she would--she always had been so far, even if she didn’t understand. He knew she’d be there in the future, as long as he kept coming back here.

After a few more moments of silence, Y/N got to her feet again, facing him fully. “Well, we should probably head back to my house--it’ll get dark soon, and if my mom comes home and I’m gone for too long she’ll freak out. I can play the piano for you some more!” she offered cheerfully.

She really was on a mission to bolster his spirits whenever they were together, wasn’t she? Still, Levi shrugged and walked back over to her. “Knock yourself out,” he said casually, though he did feel that spark of interest inside him. He did like listening to her play the piano, and he never turned her down when she offered to play.

As they were walking back, something occurred to Levi, and he looked up at Y/N with slightly narrowed eyes. “Earlier...you said no one believed you when you mentioned me? You had your stuff taken for lying that one time, but you said you didn’t lie.”

Her face fell slightly, and she nodded reluctantly. “When we were younger my mom just wrote it off as me talking about imaginary friends. But when I kept talking about you despite being old enough to grow out of it, and I kept insisting you were real, they got worried. It stopped for a while after you brought me home because the cops had seen you too, even if it was briefly. But now...she has me seeing a doctor because I keep insisting you’re real.”

Levi’s eyes widened slightly, the seriousness of that statement falling over him and a few of her words shifting into sharper clarity and impact. He hadn’t known she was having to defend his existence over here--he hadn’t even known she’d told anyone else about him. And to hear her mother thought she was crazy talking about a boy her mother had never seen but had somehow followed them through all their moves across the country. It seemed like she was a hair’s breadth away from being called crazy, all because she refused to deny that he was real, even if he wasn’t around.

No wonder she’d reacted so strongly when he denied this was happening and it was some sick hallucination.

His jaw clenched, as did his hand at his side out of her view.

It was the best answer he could give. A sense of solidarity, and a removal of doubt from the one person she’d thought wouldn’t deny the reality of what was happening.

“I know you’re real, too.”


	8. Spark

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Be grateful guys, the next chapter in my outline was supposed to be super heavy emotional stuff, but I decided to put in this filler chapter first to give you guys a bit of a breather after that last chapter. You’re welcome…however that heavy part is still next lol
> 
> Also, here is a YouTube video with JUST piano for the song I picked later in this piece. I put a lot of thought into what the first piece was going to be and this one just…resonated. ( https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fxW0pW_OGn8 )
> 
> Also, just a heads up, Chapter 9 is going to take a while. There’s gonna be…a lot of stuff I want to execute right in that chapter, so I’m going to be taking my time with it.

**_*Reader’s POV*_ **

Stretched out on your belly on the floor of your room, you had a wooden board in front of you, eyes focused as you messed with the basic wire in your hands, doing your best to strip back the plastic like you had seen your teacher do in science class a few days ago. There were various objects around you–duct tape, electrical tape, a mason jar, pencil lead, alligator clips, the wire, wire strippers, the board, and a bulky collection of D batteries.

It was your science project, and you were doing your test run at home before you had to present it in class. Your mother was not aware you were doing this on the floor in your room, though she probably should have considering you had the inkling this might be a fire hazard. You were a teenager, though–barely, but it still counted–so you were capable of making sure you didn’t accidentally set the house on fire.

Tongue moving back and forth out of concentration, you were gradually causing shreds of wire covering to fall onto the carpet, trying to get a hand of the process and not hurt the wire in the process, which was turning out a little more difficult than you thought it would be. You had one good wire, but the other was being stubborn.

“Every time I find you, you’re doing new weird shit.”

You did a little jump–as much as you could lying on your belly on the ground–at Levi’s unexpected voice, looking up in surprise to see him with his arms crossed in front of his chest staring down at you, eyes narrowed slightly at the mess you were making on the carpet.

You huffed, turning your attention back to the wire and clipping the damaged end as you tried again. “It’s not weird, it’s my homework–my science homework. I’m making a homemade lightbulb. Well… _trying_ to. The wire’s being difficult,” you muttered grumpily, attempting to strip the covering off the wire yet again. You almost had it, but there was a bit clinging to the other side still, and your tongue poked out again as you attempted to get it off without hurting the wire since you were so close to having your second wire.

Levi crouched down next to your little chaotic mess, a slight frown on his face. “This looks nothing like your lights.”

You huffed, your momentary victory at finally stripping the second wire successfully dimmed by his pointing out the obvious. “Well, _obviously_ –I’m not at a factory. I’m making one with things you find at home. Mostly, anyway. My mom doesn’t keep D batteries around, and we had to get the alligator clips, but the rest we had lying around the house!”

You waved him closer, putting the wires in place on the board with their stripped ends curling loosely around the board and the unstripped ends up in the air, having him hold them down–why not use the extra hands while you had them?–while you duct tapped them to the board. You attached the alligator clips to the unstripped ends, then very carefully put the lead between the two clips, being extra careful not to break it. Then you were duct tapping the batteries together in a line, positive to negative end, keeping it tight so none of them to get loose as you gabbed to Levi about the differences in your little homemade lightbulb and the one made in factories. How the filament was usually tungsten and not lead, how there was a gas in the lightbulbs to help keep it from exploding, on and on you rambled, well aware that he might not know half of what you were talking about, but at least he was listening and wordlessly helping you hold things together and get everything set up.

With the batteries taped in a line, you held the stripped wire ends in each hand, beaming proudly at Levi. “All right–put the jar over the clips and lead, and let’s see if I did this right…”

Levi placed the upside down mason jar over your homemade filament makeup, and you pressed the ends of the wires to the opposite sides of the batteries, taking care to correspond the positive and the negative ends to the right clamps. The lead lit up, the mason jar glowing like a lightbulb for several seconds as you laughed happily.

“Haha! I got it to work! Yes!” you crowed seconds before the lead snapped and the light went out.

“Was it supposed to do that?” Levi asked after seeing you weren’t perturbed by the lead breaking and ending the brief bit of light.

“Yeah. Lead can’t withstand the electricity long before breaking. Like I said, they use tungsten in actual lightbulbs, but that’s not a common household thing, so it’s not something I can use in my experiment unless I break a factory made lightbulb. And I don’t think that would work out well,” you said, scraping up the debris from your wire stripping fiasco and removing the mason jar to take out the broken pieces of the lead as well. “Now I know it works, though, so I can take this to school tomorrow and I don’t have to worry about messing up in front of everyone.”

After throwing away your debris, you picked up the board and the other pieces you needed for your project to move it downstairs onto the dining room table, where you would easily see it to be reminded to grab it on your way to school tomorrow.

“Do you still have assholes picking on you?”

Setting the project down on the table carefully, you hesitated for a moment. He knew you weren’t living in the same place as when you were younger–you were in an entirely different part of the country. It seemed your comment made him worry nothing had changed much, though.

“No, nothing like that. It’s middle Junior High and High School for me, now, which means it’s all about the psychological warfare,” you said with a sigh, gaze cast aside. Sure, you weren’t getting beat up anymore, which was a huge win for you and already made where you were going to school now better by default. You weren’t at the bottom of the social food chain, but you weren’t popular, either. You were just kind of…there. Ostracized, left out of every social circle, with a few people actively picking on you. It wasn’t _unbearable_ , but it wasn’t pleasant, either.

You turned back to scoff at him, hands on your hips and attempting to ignore that scrutinizing gaze of his. “But who wants to talk about _school_ at a time like this? There’s so many things to do when you’re here, it’s _ridiculous_! Games to play, movies to watch, places to go, things to eat…”

“You’re terrible at changing the subject.”

“Yet you still let me get away with it,” you said teasingly, flashing him a smile before racing back upstairs. “Come on, I know what I wanna do!”

Levi simply sighed behind you, but you heard him following you up the stairs nonetheless.

* * *

**_*Levi’s POV*_ **

No more running.

Ever since his ‘awakening’ in the clearing with Y/N, Levi hadn’t lost a fight. Everything came so much easier to him, he wondered if he had ever mastered what Kenny taught him to begin with. He always knew exactly what to do in a fight, and he was quickly gaining a reputation in the streets.

Of course, he still occasionally got roughed up when the odds were painfully skewed. Even with his newfound power and his maturity he was still, in the end, just a kid. Even he had to admit it, since he was hardly a teenager.

Such was the fight he was in right now. He was going to win it, but he’d already accumulated a few cuts and scrapes, and was sure to get more before it was over. The odds were harshly stacked against him, eleven to one to start, though he’d managed to put four out of commission so far.

Levi flipped the dagger in his hand into the reverse grip, gaze hard and cold as it roamed continuously over his opponents to make sure he lost track of none of them. One of them attempted to rush him and Levi swiped, cutting open his arm before he partially turned to dig an elbow into the ribcage of one that had tried to come in from behind during the distraction, leg flying out to nail a third in the face and send them tumbling to the ground. An arm got within grabbing distance, and Levi threw them sideways to the ground in a wide arc, coming back up to clock another in the jaw, eyes flashing dangerously as he again swung the knife at another, the blade going in a wide arc out in front of him in a swift cut.

Halfway through, the sound of the fight disappeared, besides a startled squeak/scream that made his eyes go wide and the blade halt, immediately flipped around in his hand so he was holding it by the blade before it could hurt anyone, blunt edge resting along his palm.

_Oh shit._

Levi quickly readjusted to his surroundings, instantly knowing what had happened and praying he hadn’t accidentally hurt her.

Thankfully, she seemed to be off to the side and wasn’t standing directly in front of him, which soothed his biggest fear that had lanced through his mind for a heart stopping moment.

As soon as the blade was covered and Levi had pulled it out of view, she relaxed a bit more, unfurling from her startled recoil as she met Levi’s wide eyes.

“Are you in some kind of trouble? Over there?” she asked hesitantly, gaze flickering over to the bloodied blade Levi was attempting to keep hidden from her, even if she’d already seen it briefly. Levi’s response was reflexive, ingrained from all these years he’d spent trying to shield her from all the unpleasantness in his life.

“No–”

“Don’t lie to me, Levi, I’m not stupid,” she snapped before he could get any further, prompting a raised eyebrow from Levi that made her look away with a blush coloring her cheeks.

“Just a fight. I’ll be fine, it’s nothing too difficult for me to handle,” Levi clarified.

Her gaze flickered across the cuts and scrapes he was already sporting. “It doesn’t look like nothing.”

“They’re not serious.”

Well, he did have one cut that was fairly deep and would need stitches, but he wasn’t going to tell her that and worry her. He’d shown up waving a knife in the air and she still hadn’t fully bounced back, still partially withdrawn into herself. However, at his dismissal of the smaller injuries he was sporting, she let out a soft snort, finally relaxing to a posture that was more befitting her, right down to the determined, bossy air that arose in her walk as she walked towards and past him, tugging slightly on his shirt to get him to follow her. At least she wasn’t grabbing him by the wrist dragging him around like a doll anymore.

“You still look pretty banged up,” she said, leading him into the bathroom and pulling a clear container out of the cabinet before rolling up her sleeves and starting to furiously scrub her hands clean.

Different universe or not, it was easy to recognize a first aid kit when he saw one.

“No, I don’t need taken care of, they’re fine, no point in wasting the supplies on them,” he immediately started to protest once he realized what her intention was.

“Too bad. Take a seat on the toilet while I find…the peroxide…” she muttered looking under the cabinet and coming up with a large brown bottle, a washcloth, and a package of fuzzy white balls.

“I’m not a baby, I’m perfectly capable of taking care of myself _after_ the fight is _over_ ,” Levi returned stubbornly, still not sitting. It would be pointless to try and treat him now, anyway. He was just going to return to the moment he’d left behind when he was done here, and he’d be right back in the conflict probably undoing any work she did on him now.

“I don’t care. You’re here now, and I’m capable of doing something, so: _sit_.”

She soaked the washcloth in warm water and wrung it out, at least having the courtesy to hand him the washcloth so he could clean himself up of the dirt and some blood first.

“Tch.”

While he was doing that, she pulled a step stool up to sit directly in front of him, now at a lower elevation than him as she waited for him to finish.

He started to set the washcloth back on the counter, but she stopped him. “Hold on, you missed a spot,” she murmured, taking the cloth and leaning in to gently dab at a spot on his chin where there was also a scrape. He wasn’t surprised he’d missed something considering he wasn’t looking in a mirror and just doing a general wash.

She was extremely careful, like she’d been when he was sick, her motions firm enough to remove the dirt but light enough not to agitate the minor injury. She moved a little higher, getting a spot in his hairline that had a small cut near it atop his scalp.

While she worked, Levi stayed stoic and perfectly still, but on the inside, he felt a little…warm, at her proximity and the care she was putting into this. He’d already told her they were minor wounds, she didn’t need to trouble herself with them, especially since he would just go right back to the fight, but she didn’t care about that. True to her running theme when it came to him, she just wanted to help, and she was going to do it however she could whenever she could.

She finally pulled back, setting the washcloth aside. “All right, now that that’s done,” she murmured, grabbing the brown bottle and one of the white things before tipping the bottle over for a few seconds, holding one edge of the white thing between pinched fingers as she turned back to him. “I don’t know if you have this, but it’s peroxide. You use it on small injuries to clean them and help make sure they don’t get infected. It might sting or tingle a bit, but that just means it’s working,” she told him before she started dabbing the cold, wet puff ball against the scrape on his chin.

Like she’d warned, it stung–nothing painful for him, more uncomfortable. He held still while she worked, moving on from one scrape to the next, wetting a new ball whenever the one she was using dried. He continued to mutter about this being ultimately pointless, but she ignored him, and at this point, he wasn’t saying it because he actually believed it. He was secretly enjoying watching her care so intently for him once more, and how focused she was just on this one task.

“I don’t think I’ve told you this, but that haircut looks pretty good on you,” she commented out of the blue while she was lightly dabbing at the cut in his hairline. “My compliments to your barber.”

“I cut my own hair,” Levi corrected her bluntly.

“Oh,” she said, pausing for a moment out of surprise before she continued what she was doing. “It’s a pretty good job, then. The most I’ve ever done to my own hair is uneven chops that made mom have to take me to a professional to get it fixed,” she chuckled.

Once she was done with the scrapes, the tiny cuts, and the one larger cut on his cheek, she grabbed the washcloth and held it underneath his arm, pouring some of the peroxide on the wound and catching the runoff in the washcloth before dabbing away at the trails left on his arm. Having it poured directly on the wound hurt a bit more, and he twitched, causing Y/N to glance up at him while Levi stared at the white bubbling in the cut.

“Well, it’s definitely working. It should help keep away any nasty infections,” she commented as she moved onto the next cut a little further up.

Why are you even going to the trouble of doing all this?“ Levi muttered as he watched the next cut foam up as well. He didn’t really get her insistence to treat the tiny wounds, even if he was secretly enjoying it.

"Because I want to, and I can,” she said simply. Levi let out a frustrated little sigh.

“Okay, _why_ do you want to?”

She stared at him like it was the most obvious thing in the world. “Because you’re my friend, and I care about you.”

And then she went right back to focusing on what she was doing, oblivious to the fact that little statement of hers had Levi fighting back a blush.

The last wound she reached was the one running along the side of his forearm, the deep one that was going to need stitches. He’d forgotten about it while he was watching her treat him, and when she turned his arm around to see it, he pulled away.

“That one’s going to need stitches,” he told her quietly. She looked suddenly abashed.

“I don’t know how–”

“It’s fine. I do,” he said getting ready to get up and be done with this now that she’d reached the point she couldn’t help more.

“Well, we do have a kit for stitches, if you want to do that now,” she offered, sitting back in her little stool as Levi was raised partially off the toilet.

Levi hesitated. This was probably the best place he could do the stitches. Everything was already so clean here, and with her technology, he was certain the needle and thread would be properly sterilized, possibly better than it would be doing it himself where he lived.

“Fine,” Levi said with a sigh, settling back down onto the toilet while Y/N got up to grab the stitches kit she’d mentioned, pulling a slender box out from the bottom of the first aid kit.

“Everything needs sterilized, first,” he instructed as she opened the kit. A quick glance showed the curved needle, the thread, the needle driver…

“I know that much, I’ve seen movies!” She protested. While he had yet to see one of the movies or TV shows she kept mentioning, he was aware of the concept of what they were, and her words didn’t particularly inspire confidence. However, she took the kit and headed for the door. “Let me go nail some water, first, that should do it!”

Levi got up to follow after her, heading down the stairs and through the living room, into the dining room/kitchen where she was already heating up water on the stove, the kit open at the end of the table closest to the stove. He sat down at the table with a soft sigh, propping his elbow on the table with his arm up in the air, taking a closer look at the injury to assess how deep he would need to dig the needle to suture the wound.

They sat in silence while Y/N got the supplies ready, a slightly somber air between them as she finally brought them over to Levi, sitting in the chair next to him as he picked up the needle with the needle driver, picking the spot to start and clenching his teeth as the needle dug into his skin to make the stitch.

For a few moments, he was focused entirely on the stitches, until he realized he could feel eyes on him. Looking up, he realized she was gazing at him intently, watching how he was doing the stitches with surprising focus. He’d honestly expected more of a…reaction, from her. Or at least, not this kind of reaction.

“You’re not squeamish?” he asked, pausing for a moment in his stitching. She rolled her eyes at his question.

“I have a military father who had me watching spy and action shows when I was really young. Other kids were watching Barney and SpongeBob while I was watching James Bond and House.”

“Those words mean nothing to me,” he reminded her bluntly, looking back at the wound to focus on closing it up again.

“Everyone else was watching children stuff and I was watching a medical show and a spy action story. Stitching a cut closed and a little blood doesn’t really bother me.”

Levi hid a little twitch of his lips upwards towards a smile at her little tirade. Sometimes he forgot she had guts buried under that timid, cheerful demeanor of hers.

They settled back down again, with Y/N continuing to watch him stitch the cut closed until he finished, at which point she took the supplies back and washed them up in the sink before putting them back in the case.

“I’m going to clean up the mess–you can help yourself to whatever’s in the pantry or fridge if you want something to eat or drink,” she said before prancing out of the room.

Well, while he was here, he might as well get some clean, filtered water. Maybe she had some fruit lying around that he could dip into…

Levi searched the kitchen cabinets until he found a glass, then turned on the sink to fill it was cold water, the contrast to what was found in the Underground refreshing and soothing.

He was almost done when he felt a slight…shift, in his chest, and he hardly had time to set the glass down on the counter, body tensing instinctively before he was back in the dark of the Underground, knife slicing through the air and impacting with someone’s chest directly in front of him.

His breath caught, and his movement halted for a split second after his cut before he registered the situation again, and he quickly spun to attack the next person before they could take advantage of his hesitation, throwing himself right back into the fight with the intention to end it quickly before he got more dirt or cuts that rendered all that care Y/N had just given him useless.

* * *

**_*Reader’s POV*_ **

The next time you saw Levi, he didn’t initially make a sound. If it wasn’t for the fact that you were used to him appearing out of nowhere, you would have found it creepy how he was just standing behind you while you were unaware, watching you play the piano. You’d been playing long enough now that you were getting really good at it–you weren’t Debussy or Chopin or anyone like that, but you could play some of their works fairly easily, and you had several pieces that you had committed to memory by now.

As such, you were practicing a Chopin piece when you suddenly became aware of the prickle on the back of your neck, and you turned to see Levi sitting on the arm of one of the couches, looking perfectly relaxed and at home as he watched you play.

“Levi!” you said in surprise, the music stopping as you started to turn around on the bench to face him.

“Don’t stop on my account. You’re practicing, right?” he asked, nodding towards the upright piano that sat proudly in your living room.

Well, you _were_ , but now he was here. You were always trying to make the time he spent with you worth it, even more so now that you were aware he came from a much…darker place, and his time here was usually fleeting, save for the few rare moments when he seemed to really _need_ to be here.

Of course, he also was fond of watching you play, you knew that much from how often he’d asked you about your piano lessons and your progress, or the times in the past you had played something for him. So you knew if you continued to play, he’d be perfectly content just watching you.

But you wanted to do something _more_.

Frowning slightly with the gears turning in your head, you looked back at the ivory keys in front of you, and a thought sparked in your mind.

“Come over here,” you insisted, getting up from the bench so you could open it and dig out your folder of sheet music for your favorite pieces from within, arranging it on the stand in front of you as Levi came over to the piano. After you sat down, you patted the bench on your left as a sign for him to sit down with you. “I’m going to teach you how to play something.”

“Why? It’s not like there’s pianos in the Underground for me to play on.”

“Because it will be fun, and you clearly like the piano, so why not learn how to play a few things on it?” you returned with a touch of sass in your voice, opening your folder and flipping through some sheet music. You flipped past some of your favorite pieces that you knew were too hard for someone who’d never touched the piano before, looking for something with repeating melodies, something he could learn in parts by memory without having to necessarily learn any keys yet and then string together.

 _Well, I like “River Flows in You,” that might be a good one to get started on_ , you thought, hands reaching for the paper before the corner of the page from another piece caught your eye.

“Primavera,” or Springtime, by Einaudi. You thumbed the corner of the page, the notes playing through your mind as you considered.

You’d always thought the piece felt…melancholy, something about it sad and lonely, but at the same time it was pure, beautiful with a tinge of hope peaking through. In a way, it seemed… _fitting_ , that it would be the first piece you attempted to teach him, somehow suited to him, or maybe both of you. Not to mention, if you had Levi play just the notes on the left hand, it would involve a lot of simple repeating melodies you could teach to him in parts, while you could play the more complicated and trilling parts that were played with the right hand.

“This one,” you announced confidently, pulling out the sheet music for your reference and tossing the folder carelessly back onto one of the couches, confident the pages wouldn’t spread everywhere in the process.

“Okay…so I will teach you…the melody for this, and I can add the flavor, since the other half of this is a little difficult for a beginning and more varied. You’re going to play the stuff for the left hand, only, but it’s a lot of repeating parts on the left side, so you really only have to learn some patterns to play it,” you started to explain, checking the sheet music before you guided his left hand to the right position on the piano. “A lot of these you’ll do the same thing, just at different points on the keys. Like this…”

You played the opening part on the piano, slowing it down slightly so he could also see what keys you were hitting repeatedly.

“That where it will start, but occasionally, you’ll play it a little higher, or a little lower, like this,” you explained, shifting your hand a little lower and playing the same pattern at a lower tone, feeling Levi’s intense focus on what you were doing. “That’s what I mean you mostly just have to learn patterns for this piece. You’re technically going to be playing the same things over and over, even if you move it up or down a bit.”

After explaining in a way you hoped made it sound easier and encouraged him to give it a shot, you set about teaching him the patterns that would repeat in the piece, starting with the more medium difficulty opening, going through the keys over and over with him, making sure he used only his left hand, until he had the first pattern down. Then you taught him the easier patterns, labeling them as numbers so you could simply tell him ‘Play two, play four,’ on command until he was able to weave them together on memory, which you didn’t expect him to be doing today, unless he was going to be here all day and you weren’t going to be interrupted.

Once he had the base melodies down, you taught him some of the variants–the times where the opening melody was a little wide spread, until he had separately mastered each part of the left hand melodies. You kept switching which melody you wanted him to play, just to make sure he wasn’t forgetting any of the old melodies while teaching him the new.

Satisfied with the progress he’d made so far, you scooted a little closer, and had him get ready to play the opening melody. “Now we’re going to try and put it together, all right? I’ll add in the flavor so you can hear what it sounds like altogether.” Initially not thinking anything of it, you grabbed his right hand that was resting on the back edge of the piano to keep him from trying to use it to play the left hand pieces, hooked his arm around you, and slipped your hand under his. Levi started to pull away, suddenly hesitant.

“What are you doing?”

“Stop freaking out,” you chided him. “I want you to be able to feel the movements my right is making while you play. It will help keep you from using your other hand, but also get you used to the movements for the other half even if you’re not currently playing them. Who knows, maybe the muscle memory will make the second half easier to play when you get there. Just keep your hand on top of mine while we play, you’ll see.”

Still hesitating, Levi let you place his right hand atop yours as you found the correct position on the piano for the right hand, your left lightly touching his left wrist. “I’m also going to occasionally move your left hand to the right position for the keys, just because it will switch so quickly, okay? This is the first time I’ve done something like this, but I think it should work out, even if it takes a few tries,” you admitted a little bashfully, scooting in a little more until you were pressed against his side so he wouldn’t have to stretch so much to reach the keys.

Your stomach squirmed, his breath on your neck and hair with the close proximity as you cleared your throat. “Go ahead and play one, at the starting position.”

There was a moment of hesitation before Levi began to play the melody you’d taught him, with you focusing on the keys and keeping track of the count so you knew when to come in. All the while you were attempting to ignore the closeness your technique had put you two in, and the feel of his warm hand atop your right…

He finished the second round of the melody, and you started on the ‘flavor,’ as you had called it, fingers starting to add the right hand keys to the mix as he continued to play the memory on repeat. His fingers were laying atop yours, able to feel every dip and shift with the movements your fingers made, so that he was playing half the song, while his other hand ghosted along the second, more complicated half.

“First variant,” you murmured, nudging his hand down the proper space of keys when the melody shifted to what might have been the most difficult part of what he had to learn. The keys were a little shaky, it was clear that it was new for him, but that wasn’t what mattered–he was doing great so far, and your addition of an entirely different melody on another part of the piano hadn’t thrown him off, yet. He did miss a few keys, but he kept going, especially when your hand slid over his in the mirror of what was going on with your right hands, except this time your hand was barely resting atop his, fingers lightly pressing against his along with the keys, since this was a piece that you knew well.

“Stop,” you murmured, as for a moment, it was just you playing, and you could feel his eyes heavy on you as your fingers continued to guide his. Your heartbeat sounded a little louder in your ears, but you treated it like normal stage fright and muscled past it. “Play three,” you ordered a few seconds before the music shifted again, and you were both playing in harmony again, your more experienced hand carrying out the more difficult upper keys while Levi played the melody slightly nudged along to the right positions by your guiding hand.

For a short while, or rather, the seven or eight minutes it took to play the song, it was just the two of you, sitting side by side, hands atop one another, and the sound of Primavera fluttering through the room. It was warm like summer but fresh like spring, both of you looking at the keys instead of each other, but well aware of how the two of you were pressed together, the tingles in your hands whose warmth was in stark contrast to the cool ivory keys.

It felt raw–emotionally raw, egged on by the music you’d chosen, and soul deep. Suddenly, you longed for him to stay. You wanted to be able to do this far longer than any time the Universe was going to give you, to stretch these few moments of music into an eternity.

Melancholy but beautiful, indeed.

* * *

**_*Levi’s POV*_ **

“Just think of it like a library with almost all the knowledge of mankind, with a librarian that can instantly hand you the book on what you want when you ask for it. With people’s manifestos stuffed between pages and journals wedged between the big books to look inviting because it seems shorter and easier to read.”

“And people can put anything they want on here?”

“Pretty much, yeah. You just have to know where to look. Though usually if you start looking for the messed up or illegal stuff, you run the risk of getting a virus in your computer–some of them can completely wreck your machine, or send all your personal information to whoever’s on the other side. Which is why it’s best not to go looking for those things unless you know computers.”

“What about you?”

“Well…I can pirate movies well enough, I know better than to click the obvious virus adds, and I know the better websites to go to, but I’m pretty sure I’ve accidentally allowed a few less damaging viruses onto my computer from saving pictures and such…so I don’t think I’m exactly the model of how to surf the internet.”

Levi was currently stretched out on Y/N’s bed, arms behind his head which was turned towards her as she attempted to explain computers and the internet to him. It was unbelievable that so much could be in such a small device–she called it a laptop, a special type of computer that was portable and could be used anywhere as long as it had enough power and had a connection to the internet. The invisible electrical library, as she’d so eloquently explained to him.

“Okay, so, anything…what about tea blends?”

“Recipes? Oh, there’s almost too many,” she said, clicking away at the keyboard before a list of blue and black text appeared on the screen, and she clicked on one of the blue links, pulling up a new image of a cup of tea and more text. “Here–five different herbal tea blends you can grow the stuff for in your backyard,” she said pointedly, leaning back in her chair to make sure he had a clear view of the screen.

Levi looked away. “Not bad.”

He wished he had one of those. It could definitely come in handy. Unfortunately, he had the classic word-of-mouth and whatever books he could get his hands on…and professionals, though there weren’t too many of those in the Underground if you weren’t counting the ones that were too shady to be trusted.

The door downstairs slammed shut, prompting Levi to bolt upright on the bed in alarm as the house seemed to vibrate with the force of the door shutting, and Y/N did a sort of flail to her feet as a woman’s voice suddenly called her name.

“Mom’s home! Crap–hide!”

Levi’s mind immediately flashed to what Y/N had told him not too long ago about her mother thinking he was a figment of her imagination she was delusional enough to think was real. As she tried to shove him off the bed and into a corner to hide him, he appeared unaffected, simply pushing her arms down and off him.

“ _Why_? She meets me, and she can’t think you’re crazy anymore,” he pointed out.

“Yeah, but she will **_murder_ **me if she finds out I had a boy in my room when it was just me home, without telling her,” she hissed with panic in her voice. “Or try to forbid you from ever stepping foot in this house again, which she _has_ done before, not that it would matter much considering you blip wherever, whenever, but _still_!”

“Y/N! I know you can hear me!”

Wait, when did she have another guy in her bedroom?

“We can play show-and-tell later, right now, just _hide_!” Y/N insisted, giving a particularly strong shove that almost tipped him over the edge and had him relenting, shoved over towards her closet before she dashed out of her room before her mother could yell for her a third time. “Coming!”

Since the voices were still coming from downstairs, Levi didn’t bother hiding quite yet. He was still intent on clearing up this nonsense about her mother thinking she was crazy. Maybe he couldn’t just come downstairs and announce his presence, but if he got outside without being seen…

Knowing the layout of the house by now, he couldn’t exactly sneak past her mother on the way out the door before she knew he was here. But maybe there was another way out.

Levi went over to the window, looking outside and judging the distance to the ground. It wasn’t bad–he’d made jumps from higher up in the Underground. As such, he didn’t have to think twice about pulling the window open, crawling carefully atop the desk and crouching on the windowsill, taking a moment to make sure he jumped out properly so he didn’t injure himself. He rolled with the impact, half-crouched on the ground as he stopped to check himself over, making sure he was still presentable as he got to his feet and made his way over to the front door.

After taking a moment to decide how he wanted to do this, he knocked, waiting patiently until the doorknob rattled and it opened, revealing a woman that, as of yet, Levi had only heard but not seen.

She looked at the young man standing on her doorstep with confusion, a frown on her face. “Can I help you?”

“Y/N’s home, right?” he asked, meeting her gaze with his own indifferent ones.

She looked a little unsettled, shifting back slightly like she was thinking of shutting the door. “And you are?”

“Levi. She’s probably mentioned me.”

The amount of shock that went through her expression was oddly satisfying, though Levi didn’t change his outward expression to give it away. Instead, he waited patiently for her to process what he’d said, well aware of the shift in perspective and reality it was for her to see the apparently not-so-imaginary friend standing on her doorstep.

He doubted he looked like the type of teenager she’d want her daughter hanging around, either–he still had stitches in his arm from a knife cut, and a few faint but still healing cuts and the like in various visible places. Not to mention, compared to the colorful and well-made clothes that Y/N had in her world, his looked at the very least outdated, obviously belonging to someone of little means.

He didn’t quite have his own clean space and enough money to live like he wanted to, but he would get there. For now, he was making due with what he had.

Y/N’s mother suddenly stepped out, causing Levi to have to take a step back to give her enough room to step outside while she shut the door behind her, folding her arms across her chest.

Here came the questions.

“And I would believe that because? How do I know she didn’t put someone from school up to this that I haven’t met before?” she asked suspiciously.

“Because she doesn’t know I’m out here yet. And I could tell you things she wouldn’t have been able to prepare me to answer. I know in the past we’ve just missed each other, but I heard what you thought about her because you hadn’t seen me, and decided I would go out of my way to make myself known this time.”

His tone was borderline cold at the end, gaze piercing and judgmental as he spoke. She looked uneasy at the expression he was giving her, probably not used to seeing it on such young faces considering how much better things were here. He doubted many kids could give a piercing look like him that had actual weight behind it.

He didn’t feel too inclined to even act pleasant, considering not only was she questioning her daughter’s sanity, but was now going to challenge him on being _him_.

“I find it hard to believe the same boy has been following us around for all these years, and somehow I haven’t met you until it’s convenient for her,” her mother said pointedly. It did, admittedly, make more sense for Levi to not be who he claimed to be, but he was going to make sure she believed it before he blipped back to his world this time.

“The guy that used to take care of me moved around a lot, so I wasn’t always around. When you were living on the East Coast, I _was_ the one who stopped the kids on the street from picking on her when she walked home. And I’m the one who helped her find her way home safely that night she ran away and got lost in the desert. I know those two cops saw me. And yes, I really was in her playhouse for two whole days before I had to go home when we were really young–she claimed she was looking for a stuffed animal she’d left outside when really she fell asleep in the playhouse making sure I was taken care of. There was a large field that was a conservation site a short walk from that house, and a small corner store that sold ice cream.” At this point, the woman looked visibly shaken, so Levi decided he probably had made his point. “I’ve been around. So you can stop trying to convince her she’s crazy, because I _do_ exist.”

Y/N’s mother looked desensitized at the lack of respect she was getting from this scrawny little teenager standing on her porch, and opened her mouth to likely chastise him about his attitude. Before she could, they were interrupted by the sound of thudding feet and the door swinging open, a disheveled Y/N standing in the doorway and muscling past her mother to throw herself in a mixture of excitement and relief at Levi.

“Levi!” she said happily, and Levi grimaced as her arms encircled him and she almost knocked him over, continuing to hang off of his neck like a clingy child.

“Cut that out,” he grumbled, turning his head away to hide a blush. Five seconds ago he’d been successfully intimidating despite being clearly younger and much smaller, and now here she was, ruining the entire effect by hanging off him like a cuddly leech.

“Mom, this is Levi–the one I’ve told you about,” she said cheerfully, though there was a bit of a hard, pointed edge in that look she was shooting the other woman.

“We were just establishing that,” Levi muttered, but she pushed on as if she hadn’t heard him.

“He usually works outside of school, and he’s homeschooled, so he’s not free that often–”

“Get off me, I’m not a teddy bear,” Levi complained, pulling her arms off him so she wasn’t continuing to throw him off balance and threatening to drag him to the ground with how much weight she kept putting on him, pulling him around like a damn toy.

“–So we gotta make the moments he’s free, count!” she finished cheerfully, finally letting him go as he scowled and tried to look intimidating again after that. “All my chores and homework is done, and we’re not going anywhere tonight. We’ll go to the park, and be back before dinner!” she promised, clasping a hand on his shoulder briefly to give him a tug backwards before she started to hurry off.

Levi lingered for a moment to study her mother’s gaze a few moments longer before he turned to follow after Y/N, noting she seemed even more antsy than normal to get away before the tension in the air escalated to something explosive. She kept trying to run ahead, but Levi wasn’t having it, staying at a calm walk down the sidewalk.

“Calm down, you’re too hyper,” he grumbled as she bounced around him, clearly impatient for him to walk faster so they would be out of range of her mother’s hearing and eyesight

“You’re too mellow, sometimes,” she shot back.

“Cause I’m not a wind-up toy, unlike you. I’d have to knock you out to get you to calm down half the time,” Levi sighed, still unbothered by her unspoken insistence that they move faster.

After a few minutes, they were well out of range, and she turned to look at Levi with an accusing look on her face. “I don’t think she likes you–what did you say to her?”

“I told her you weren’t crazy and I was real. Who got kicked out of your house, and why? It was _not_ just because you had a boy in your room.”

“It was someone who came over to help me with my math homework, he was a few grades above me but we had a mutual friend. Mom said he could stay as long as I left the door to my room open. I went to the bathroom, shut the door on instinct when I came back in, and five minutes later he was kicked out of the house and forbidden from ever coming inside the house again. She’s petty like that. So again–what did you say?”

“Nothing that wasn’t true. Are we really going to the park, or were you just saying that so you could get me away from her?”

“Both. Sometimes, Levi, you’re _infuriating_.”

“So are you.”

She kicked at a rock as they passed by with a pout. “Jerk.”

“Brat.”

“I am _not_!”

Levi just snorted.


	9. April

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> WARNING: THIS CHAPTER CONTAINS HUGE SPOILERS FOR THE ANIME "YOUR LIE IN APRIL!"
> 
> I’m getting ahead of the question now and stating that in this world, AOT isn’t an anime (Poor souls). So no, the Reader isn’t going to become omnipotent to Levi’s life/world.
> 
> It might feel a weird mix of rushed and long, because they’re watching the entirety of Your Lie In April, but I wasn’t going to transcribe the whole show, so there’s a lot of summarizing and cutting things out and highlighting certain pieces, but its still long because there’s a LOT to cover.
> 
> Also because of how emotional this chapter is actually going to be, I want to just remind…that Levi is like, mid teens, and hasn’t gone through much of the stuff that adult Levi has been through, so in my mind, that justifies a bit more of a REACTION for some of this stuff. But he’s still Levi, and he’s still going to be reserved and such, just…not as controlled as Adult Levi.
> 
> I’m putting quotes from Your Lie in April in italics with quotes and an indent/blockquote, so its clear that they came from the show. Levi’s thoughts/memories will just be in italics, no indention, as usual.

**_*Levi’s POV*_ **

At long last, Y/N was finally going to show him those movie, show things she kept talking about. He knew plays and acting and putting on an act, but the concept of a show that was saved so you could watch it whenever you wanted without having to make people do it over and over was novel to him.

Boisterously proclaiming that it was going to be a “Movie Night” day, she’d grabbed his hand and dragged him after her like she’d used to do when they were young, despite his protests. To be fair, he didn’t try too hard to wiggle away, either, letting her pull him along to the living room as she fussed and tried to decide what they were going to watch.

After all of her attempts to explain what a movie or TV show was, she decided that the best way to explain it to him was just to show him, though she still had to stop and explain the type of show they were watching.

“Okay, so what I’m showing you right now, is actually called an anime. It’s a type of animation from a country called Japan, and it’s made from computers or hand drawn. They draw the story, picture by picture, and put it together to make the characters and such move, with actors doing their voices and recording it in time with the pictures, sound effects like bells and wind also being saved, background music, so on and so forth,” she explained as she cut up pieces of paper and layered them on top of each other, pulling out a pencil and drawing a circle on each page, moving its position slightly each time. “See, if you do it frame by frame, and then move it really fast, it’s like the ball is bouncing–animation, and anime, works off the same concept, except they’re drawing everything,” she continued to explain, grabbing the bottom page and then letting the papers rapidly spring free, causing Levi to see the ball she drew appear to move along the page, even though he knew it was a bunch of individual drawings going by rapidly.

“They draw a solid background that doesn’t move, and then they add another layer on top that you can see through like glass, but they draw the moving parts on that layer, so it looks like they’re in the solid background and they’re walking and whatnot. It’s really cool–makes me wish I could draw,” she continued, putting aside the papers she’d used for her demonstration and picking up the controller so she could get them started, gesturing for Levi to take a seat on the couch. “I haven’t seen this one yet, but a friend recommended I watch it cause I love music, and I play the piano, and she said it was a really good coming of age story. I’m a little wary cause she said she wanted my reaction to the end, but she usually suggests stuff I love, so I’m gonna trust it,” she continued to babble as the screen lit up with colors and pictures like a computer screen, most of it nonsensical to Levi as she shifted rapidly past most of it looking for the specific show.

She stopped on something extremely colorful, blues and yellows and pinks and reds in vibrant color with four drawn people lying in what looked like the sky, and she abruptly turned to face him. “Are you okay with having to read what they say? The original is in a different language, so it’ll have subtitles at the bottom translating what they say. There are other versions where they redid the speaking parts in different languages, but I really like listening to the original–I feel like it really gets the emotions across because it’s so well done.”

Levi hesitated for a moment, contemplating her offer of putting it in a language they understood or keeping the original and having to read what they were saying. Eventually, he just shrugged. “Whichever you want.”

“Subtitles it is,” she said, turning back to the TV and messing with a few things before she finally started the show, coming over to sit by him on the couch. He was sitting _normally_ , his ankle propped up on his leg with one arm resting against the back of the couch, the other lying casually in his lap. Y/N, however, sat directly beside him, his arm behind her shoulders and her side pressed slightly against his, causing Levi to glance at her, mind flashing back to how she’d sat at the piano with him not too long ago. She wasn’t even glancing at him, though, gradually relaxing next to him like a kitten curling up to get warm, her eyes fixed on the colorful display that was now on the TV.

Turning his attention back to the TV, Levi studied the images in front of him, a cheerful bit of piano music fluttering towards them as vibrant and colorful images of a girl chasing a black cat moved seamlessly across the screen, much smoother than the quickly drawn bouncing ball Y/N had put together to describe what they would be watching.

If she was trying to sneak a peak of his reaction, she would catch his eyes had widened at the vibrant colors and amazing detail, the realistic sounds that came through and made him want to check and see if the piano behind them was being played, or there were people hiding somewhere making the character’s voices and singing the song as the scene suddenly shifted to what Y/N described to him as an intro, a quick prologue of sorts that set the tone of the show. Thankfully, however, she’d already explained to him that the sounds were done beforehand, recorded and somehow stored so it would be repeated to the images on the screen as they watched.

It was a little…outside his realm of understanding, how it all worked, and he had the sneaking suspicion he’d just have to accept that it just _was_ and he needed to sit back and try to enjoy it. That was how a show was supposed to work, right? And that was exactly what Y/N seemed to be doing.

As she had warned him, the characters were speaking an entirely different language, so Levi couldn’t understand what was being said on its own. Thankfully, there were the subtitles to translate, Levi’s gaze flickering between reading the small letters to looking at the colorful screen to see what was happening, trying not to get too caught up in the details he didn’t understand, like the games the kids were playing, and how different the environment was even to what he saw in Y/N’s world.

At least the basic stuff he could easily make sense of–the main character was obviously the quiet and reserved, black haired, blue eyed pianist Kousei, and the characters were around Levi and Y/N’s age. The point of the story wasn’t clear yet, but she’d explained this was going to be episodic–it would be played like chapters in a novel, stopping at the end of a chapter before they would have to start the next one. So it might be a while before he started catching that. Right now, they were meeting characters, finding out their relationship to one another and getting hints at the history between them all.

Like the fact that Kousei lived alone because his father was absent, and his mother was deceased. She’d succumbed to illness when he was still young. That alone had the stirrings of empathy settling in Levi’s chest for the main character. He couldn’t relate to the abuse, but the desire to make her better, that somehow he could do something to make her feel better did resonate. It made him listen to their conversations a bit more, since he already had a foothold and something relatable.

Once he started drawing comparisons to the story unfolding in front of him, he couldn’t stop noticing them.

> _“The moment I met him, my life changed. Everything I saw, heard, and felt. All the scenery around me started to take on color. The whole world began to sparkle.”_

A world of monotone, devoid of color, until he meets a certain vibrant youth who brings a sudden rush of color and life into the world around her, dragging Kousei in by the hand–as if he could ever resist the force of nature she was.

Hm. He wondered who _that_ reminded him of.

He didn’t even notice when the “chapter” ended and the next started, his gaze flickering subtly towards Y/N on the couch beside him, appearing just as taken by the story as he already was.

However, this new chapter did bring about new questions, and was a bit closer to his grasp of understanding after watching Y/N play music for so long.

“Do you ever do competitions?” Levi asked as the characters walked around the competition and the history Kousei had at this specific building was teased, easily able to see that there was a piano on the stage despite it being a violin competition. Surely if there were competitions for violins, there were for pianos?

She shook her head, chewing slightly on her lower lip as she answered him. “No way–I play piano for myself and a few people. I’m not looking to make a career of it or become famous for it. Not to mention, I don’t think I’m cut out for competitions. There’s a lot of pressure, and they’re really strict about playing the pieces exactly how they were originally written. I want to play the piano how I feel, and that’s not always by paying attention to how it’s written on the sheet.”

“And violins? What are they like?” he asked. He hadn’t seen or heard a violin yet, and was curious to hear what they would sound like.

“They’re a string instrument–portable, small. Really beautiful, too–they’re my second favorite instrument. They usually pair wonderfully with pianos–I’m pretty sure it’s common for a piano to accompany a violin in shows and competitions.”

Levi hushed with his questions again as the scenes playing out on the TV continued to unfold and the first violin performer took the stage, Levi hearing the light and lively music of the violin for the first time, the same song being performed over and over by the nondescript and nameless musicians on the stage in the show.

Beside him, Y/N was slowly tilting her head side to side as she listened to the music being played, eyes fixed on the screen. She must have felt almost in her element watching this, while Levi felt a bit more like Tsubaki, not understanding a lot of the names and such that were being thrown around by the characters in discussion, but still there to enjoy it nonetheless. When Kousei was tapping his fingers on the armchair to the piano music, Levi’s gaze flickered to Y/N to see if she was doing something similar, since she seemed focused on the music as well. It wasn’t as precise as Kousei, maybe she wasn’t playing every note in her head, but her fingers were lightly tapping against her legs like she _wanted_ to be playing the keys on the piano.

Then came Kaori’s first performance.

Watching, Levi felt a familiarity in the girl’s intensity, once again reminded of the girl sitting next to him, who seemed to throw herself into every aspect of life around her–at least compared to him. There was a tension in the air, a feeling that this was going to be much different than the music they’d been hearing up until this point. Even Y/N had stilled next to him, eyes riveted to the girl on the screen.

The first notes were _shocking_. After listening to Y/N play the piano for so long, even his unprofessional, inexperienced ear could hear the shift in the sound, and how _rich_ and _deep_ it suddenly was. Beside him, Y/N shifted into a more upright position, eyes suddenly lighting up and sparkling as she leaned forward, her breath catching. The ripple through the audience wasn’t just in the show, but in reality, as the two of them on the couch suddenly focused entirely on Kaori’s performance.

The girl’s eyes flashed on screen, and the music suddenly leapt to life before them, making his own heart seem to pound a little faster, the sounds pleasant and uplifting to his ears, making him restless in a good way. It sounded similar to when Y/N played the piano with him that one day, not necessarily in skill, but in the _life_ and _emotion_ that was in it.

Like Y/N, Kaori was pouring herself into her playing, she shone brightly through in the piece, made like it was pulling back a curtain to reveal a part of her soul. Kousei even said as much, stating that Kaori was making the piece hers and hers alone.

The performance ended, and Y/N suddenly grabbed his arm with a squeal. “That was awesome! I’m going to have to find a recording of that!” she said breathlessly. Her excitement was infectious, and almost prompted Levi towards a smile as they slowly settled back onto the couch, the story progressing in front of them.

She was such a stark contrast to the black haired youth in front of her, the whirlwind to his reserved personality, but even she would show flashes of vulnerability, for his eyes only, it seemed. And he did what he could to hide what he could in order to protect her, without her ever knowing, probably.

Wait, was he still thinking about Kaori and Kousei?

Levi shook his head, focusing back on what was happening, reading Kousei’s contemplations about how he could still hear the refrain of the music Kaori played in the competition he witnessed, over and over.

Levi’s fingers tapped slightly against the back of the couch and in his lap, barely tapping out the melodies for the song they’d played on the piano the other day, music he heard even when he was alone with his thoughts in his own world, still able to feel her fingers aligned with his, guiding him through each key. He’d find himself tapping them out in rare moments of idleness, like he was still clinging to the memory of the sound even if he didn’t have a piano in his world.

Y/N shifted entirely back to her relaxed position against Levi’s side, head brushing briefly against his shoulder and making his skin tingle where the brief contact had been, his stomach squirming.

Kaori dragged poor Kousei around everywhere, usually into situations far out of his comfort zone, and far more aggressively than a certain someone sitting beside him. However, it seemed like more often then not, those situations were wonderful places that he wouldn’t have found or experienced on his own.

She brought color to his monochrome life.

Where he was hidden in shadows, she was cast in light, and she didn’t hesitate to pull him into the sun.

> _”I know you’re broken and beat up, but I want you. I choose you. I want you here.”_

The beginning chapters seemed to fly by quickly, with Kaori pushing Kousei more and more, and beside Levi, Y/N seemed to be slowly wiggling closer to him. Was it intentional? Did she realize she was doing it? He did–he seemed hypersensitive to every motion, yet he didn’t pull away, didn’t even twitch. He stayed still, like sudden movement might frighten her away as easily as a stray cat.

As intriguing as the events on the screen were–and he was taking in the information, such as how Kousei used to have a black cat, how he couldn’t hear the sound of the piano after his mother died and quit piano directly afterwards, important stuff like that–Levi’s thoughts kept wandering as he watched.

He thought of how beautiful the trees with the pink petals were, how breathtaking every scene with them was, and how prominently they seemed to feature in every scene that had something meaningful going on. Y/N called them cherry blossom trees. He wanted to see one. What would it look like? What would the scene be if he stood under one with her?

Before he knew it, Kaori had cornered Kousei into accompanying her on the piano, and they were rushing towards another performance. Anticipation stirred in the air between him and Y/N, both of them wondering how this piece would sound, considering Kousei had already been framed as a child prodigy on the piano, and they knew Kaori was breathtaking. What would it sound like when they played together? Levi worried about how it would turn out, how Kousei seemed to be unraveling in front of them just before they went up on stage.

Before Kaori gave him a literal smack to get him out of his own head.

As lighthearted and carefree as she seemed to be, every now and then, she would drop these little petals of wisdom.

Levi’s gaze flickered to Y/N again.

Her eyes would shift from a sparkle that almost seemed naive to a depth he hadn’t expected to see, and she’d say something that seemed beyond her years.

> _“Go on a journey. A man away from home need feel no shame.”_
> 
> _“Natural. Bizarre. It’s like this girl herself is the journey with no clear destination.”_
> 
> _**“You’re Freedom Itself.”** _

The couple took the stage. The song started out slow, sensual, peaceful. It reminded him slightly of the song Y/N taught him.

Before, predictably, Kaori brought her wild, fast paced playing back, bringing liveliness to the performance. It started beautifully, but just as the music seemed to portray some kind of descent, Kousei lost sense of the notes, the sound distorted even for them, listening, as if they were Kousei, only able to faintly hear Kaori while the rest sounded muffled, strangled out by water. When they were allowed to hear the sound again, it was off, it sounded harsh and jarring, out of sync. Not at all pleasant.

Considering the earlier mentioned problems, he should have known this wasn’t going to be a perfect and completely enjoyable performance. It was grating, and while he understood the emotional significance of seeing Kousei give up halfway through, his ears were a little grateful by that point.

The surprise was seeing Kaori stop as well. He’d thought perhaps something would urge Kousei to start playing again, but he hadn’t expected Kaori to stop in the process. Beside him, Y/N seemed to be biting on her thumbnail, her brows furrowed as she watched the screen in concern, a frown on her face, leg shifting restlessly around on the couch as she suddenly curled closer to Levi, directly against his side, oblivious to the surprised look he shot her because she was so focused with what was happening on the screen.

> _“Maybe there’s only a dark road up ahead. But you still have to believe and keep going. Believe that the stars will light your path, even a little bit.”_

Kaori began to play again, the sound of just the violin playing on its own sounding lonely and out of place, especially when he knew there should be a piano playing with it. All they needed was for Kousei to play again. Would he? No excuses, Kaori needed his support, and Levi found himself silently judging Kousei, mentally pushing him to help her, to play, because that was what she needed from him.

> _”So what was it that you saw in me?”_
> 
> _“But you have me! Look up, and look at me. Look at me.”_

Kousei starting to play again was a relief, even if it wasn’t quite right at first. After a bit of inner reflection, some time where they spent listening to the underwater sounds, it all faded away, and a soft scene of a mother and son filled the screen. The mother’s softly sung lullaby was soothing, and as it shifted to a scene of the sky, Levi’s eyes widened at the brilliant beauty it was, the range of color, of blues and whites and even some purples and pinks. How it sparkled and shimmered, stirring up emotions he didn’t know he’d buried somewhere inside him as he suddenly felt small again, curled up in a nest of soft warmth, staring out a small window up towards the sky high above him for the first time, gazing in wonder at the stars and moon that glittered high above him.

Words from one of the many times Y/N had played the piano for him drifted to his mind. How she had perceived her music had struck some kind of chord with him, even if he wasn’t saying anything–even when he realized he had no words to _describe_ what he was feeling listening to her play that single song. He remembered how she’d told him that the point, what made music with her time, was how it could communicate what couldn’t be said with mere words.

The music shifted, and Kousei finally began to _play_ , and the sound was enrapturing. There were no words–it could only be felt, what was happening between the boy at the piano and the girl with the violin.

Could he find a violin in his world? Could he learn to play it, so he could play with Y/N like Kousei played with Kaori? Would they manage to produce something similar, something wonderful like that? What would it feel like? What would the sound between _them_ be? What would it say?

> _**”I can hear your sound.”** _

So caught up in his thoughts, in the raw emotion and the music that had just enraptured them both, Levi was caught off guard when the mood took another shift.

He tensed, hand gripping the back of the couch a little harder as the sound faded away into an echo as Kaori suddenly collapsed. The hairs on the back of his neck seemed to raise, warning him of something incoming, even though there was no physical threat. He had a bad feeling, suddenly, seeing Kaori’s paler form in the hospital, seeing Kousei’s disbelieving look, the way all of her face wasn’t visible during certain key answers. It put dread inside him over what was happening with her, where this would go. A brief moment of happiness…but what did it mean in the long run? What did it matter, if it was going to be ripped so harshly away, anyway?

> _“It was everything to you, and you’re trying to rip that away by force. As if you were plucking off your limbs. That’s why it hurts too much for you to bear.”_
> 
> _“Do you think you’ll be able to forget? No, not a chance. Because you and I are living for that moment.”_
> 
> _“I won’t forget. I won’t forget, even if I die.”_
> 
> _“Thank you.”_

The mood of the show mellowed drastically, far more serious notes seeping into the air around them as Kousei and those around him were faced with far more serious matters than who liked who, and music competitions. The competitions seemed to be fading into the background, a mere backdrop to the true story.

Ah…

He might be seeing it now.

There was more to this tale than just playing in competitions.

And he had the feeling he was going to be facing some…difficult scenes. Not the kind of gristly scenes of the everyday Underground. The personal, emotional kind. He was already getting flashes of past events, old emotions stirring this early on. What would come next? How deep was this show going to dig to bring out emotions or thoughts he didn’t even know he was keeping buried?

Y/N shifted again, now blatantly sidled up beside him, head leaning slightly to the side, coming to rest very lightly on his shoulder. Levi stilled, pulled entirely from his thoughts, both of them seeming to hold the position to see what the other would do.

She didn’t pull away.

Neither did he.

Her head leaned a little more heavily against his shoulder, and she got more comfortable in her position next to him. Levi relaxed, letting her do as she pleased, silently grateful for the companionable warmth her presence beside him seemed to be offering him, allowing the scarier thoughts to temporarily be soothed and chased away. It helped that the story was shifting towards the more light-hearted as well, as Kaori and Kousei began to prepare for a piano competition.

> _“Before your fingers touch the keys, you must determine in your mind how you’re going to play it. Why do you play the piano? Is it for your sake? For someone else’s sake? How do you want to play this piece?”_

Levi turned his head slightly to look at Y/N, curiosity stirred up in his mind as Kaori grilled Kousei for his mental imagery while he played. “What about you? What do you think of when you play the piano?” he asked her.

“Hm?” she asked, pulled for the first time out of the show as she turned slightly to meet his gaze, surprised by the inquiry. “I…don’t know. It depends on the moment. Usually it’s memories, though. Certain songs make me think of certain people, usually memories with that person. Maybe something I want to do or say to them? I haven’t thought of that much before…usually I just…do it. And I tend to get lost in what I’m doing, too. I guess that’s part of the reason why I haven’t thought of it much before.”

Levi continued to look at her even as she turned her attention back to the show, barely holding back a question that bubbled up inside him.

_Have you ever thought of me?_

She was teaching him to play the piano, right? What would his mental imagery be when _he_ played?

While Levi got his quick question in and mulled over his own thoughts once more, the mood shifted to something more serious in the show again.

Kaori was worried she was being too pushy, that Kousei might resent him for forcing him into the position he was in, now. That she was being too hard on him. And something that they said resonated with him, because of recent events.

> _“You’re suffering because of me. I’m sorry.”_

Levi saw Y/N in front of him in his mind’s eye. Her eyes were downcast, lips pressed together, shoulders slightly hunched, and she was on the verge of tears after his barbed words expressing how shitty this situation was for him, how it teased him with what he could never have. Did she blame herself, for him being pulled into her world, always around her for a brief while before he was kicked back?

But again, she’d been right. Even if it was brief, that didn’t mean the time he spent here with her was worthless. It still meant something to him, and it still brought him some comfort and, oddly enough, a sense of security. From the very first time they’d met, she’d provided him with somewhere he could truly feel safe and cared for.

> _“It was you who swept away all the dust. For sweeping away the dust that had collected on my body… **thank you. For encountering me.** ”_

* * *

The more hints the story dropped about Kaori’s health, the more worried Levi became about the turn this story might take. He was bracing for impact, a small frown on his face as he saw the pile of medicine Kaori was carrying around with her at the competition. Kousei’s musical rivals didn’t register so much with him in the previous two chapters, because he was still so focused on what was happening with Kousei and Kaori.

Y/N had gotten up at one point by now to get a drink, bringing back a water for him to sip on as they continued the story, time passing by without either of their knowledge of just how long they’d been sitting here. Even Levi, usually so much more active, was content to sit here and watch, hardly noticing his inactivity as he drank up every scene, every word, some ringing out through his mind, others falling into place as narrative importance, worry and elation and nostalgia, as well as so much more, all stirred together inside him, Y/N curled up like a kitten at his side, his arm still leaning against the back of the couch, his hand resting softly on her shoulder.

However, while he and Y/N were falling into a position of ease, the story seemed to be starting to shift more to the relationship between Kousei and his mother, and what happened to her. Kaori was getting worse, it seemed, and they were digging into a relationship that felt, in certain ways, similar to what Levi had gone through, and not too long ago, either, now that he was forced to look at it. It made him…uncomfortable, to say the least, but he wasn’t saying anything–he needed to see where this story was headed, with how invested he was at this point. And even if it got personal, he thought he might be able to sit and endure it all the same.

> _”My mom’s coming from the hospital to see me perform…so you see, in order to make Mom well again, in order to make her happy, I’m gonna play my very best as a gift!”_

The first hit actually made him flinch. It was slight, but it was there, and Y/N might have caught it–he wasn’t expecting it, not from the tone, or what had just been discussed, or the way the scene changed so rapidly from the cheers of the audience after little Kousei finished playing his best for his mother to the slap across his face from the ailing woman. He suddenly felt tense, his hand still on Y/N’s shoulder and his expression suddenly unreadable as the hits kept coming, making something dark and angry well up inside him as Kousei was hit hard enough to draw blood against a backdrop of the abuse he’d been suffering the entire time.

Perhaps Y/N hadn’t caught it, because she was flinching as well, and her reaction was far more open on her face, eyes watering with near-tears, a slight shake in her body, and the occasional, shaking breath.

> _”All I wanted was for you to get better. All I wanted was for you to be happy. And yet…I wish you would just die.”_
> 
> _“That was the last time I said anything to my mom.”_

Levi’s grip tightened on Y/N’s shoulder, but neither of them said a word, a grimness in the air as they continued to watch the story in front of them that had started so colorful but was taking a darker turn rather quickly.

Levi scowled slightly at the switch to such an upbeat little song at the sudden end of the chapter, which would be followed by another upbeat song at the beginning of the next.

“These ‘intros’ and ‘outros’ are deceptively cheerful,” Levi criticized.

“What’s a good story without some struggle?” Y/N replied, though she briefly untangled herself from her position at Levi’s side and wiggled off the couch. “Though, I think I’m going to go grab some tissues. I’m starting to think there’s going to be some really sad or heartfelt stuff coming up. Tell me when it’s back on if I’m still missing!” she added before darting away, leaving Levi to sigh quietly to himself and look up at the ceiling, keeping track of the show in front of him as he waited for her to run off and come back with a colorful box, squirming back into place beside him and letting his hand return to her shoulder as she placed the box next to her on the couch, sighing contently.

“The show must go on!” she insisted, face devoid of the strong emotion they’d been sharing just a few moments ago. She settled next to him with a soft sigh, the sight of Kousei struggling at the piano returning where the previous chapter left off.

They watched him struggle against the ghost of his mother, trying to force himself to play through it, to play even though he couldn’t hear, even as the sound grated on them. Watched as he slowly gave up, until he stopped entirely before the song was even over, just like he had with Kaori.

Part of him had expected Kousei to have some kind of revelation just before he quit and push through, but he’d really stopped. Now it just remained to be seen if he could start again. Of course, after his performance with Kaori, they knew he was disqualified. But would he find a reason to play anyway, like she had?

> _”Even the you that’s here inside me, won’t let me give up. That day, I wonder. What did you play for?”_

Levi felt the ghost of her fingers on his again, unaware that he was tapping the keys against the skin of her shoulder at the memory.

Once more, the sound changed as Kousei found his reason to play. The girl who’d changed his world from monotone to color, who dragged him into a whirlwind of life without giving him the chance to think twice about it.

> _“Just one person matters to me. Only you matter. Thank you…Will it reach her? I hope it reaches her.”_

* * *

> _”Your hidden emotions. The you that you’ve never known. The piano drags out everything…”_

Levi’s gaze once more was unfocused on the screen as he was swept away in a sea of his own thoughts, thinking back to the times he’d listened to Y/N play. What had he been hearing those days? What would he hear in her playing in the future? If he put enough effort into learning to play as she tried to teach him…could it help him communicate some of the things he struggled to say? It was at least worth giving it a shot.

And he would be sure to pay closer attention in the future to see what he could hear, what he may not be aware of.

The pacing lulled into something more relaxed once more, a brief reprieve after the emotions that were just thrown at them, allowing him and Y/N to talk a bit more, both of them keeping one eye on the subtitles even as they made little comments about what they’d heard so far. The unspoken love triangle? Maybe it was a triangle. The romantic feelings were crisscrossed and all over the place between this group of friends. They commented on their observations about Kousei and Kaori, what they thought was going to become of the two as they watched, whether Kaori or Tsubaki would end up the one with him in the future.

Music was another thing they talked about, obviously. How they wanted to hear Kousei and Kaori play together again–and were excited they had the chance to with the upcoming concert. Y/N also expressed how she loved Chopin pieces, and as a result was happy about how many Chopin pieces were in the show so far and was hoping to hear more. She also mentioned that Love’s Sorrow, the song they were working on now for the concert, was a beautiful piece–mournful, obviously, but beautiful. She even offered to help him learn it when he got more used to the piano if he wanted to.

Levi was a little distracted, though, by the further warning signs that something was going to happen to Kaori. In the same stroke that he contemplated how she had a skill for seeing the beauty in the world, like Y/N tended to do for him, she said something ominous that further solidified a growing suspicion that Levi was keeping in mind.

> _“You know, **I’m not always going to be around to help you.** ”_

As worried about Kaori as that line made Levi for the context of the show, it also reminded him of his own situation with Y/N. He helped when he could, but he was absent so often…and it worked both ways. He was perfectly capable of taking care of himself when he was on his own, but Y/N he worried about. What if something serious happened when he wasn’t around to help her? Would she be all right? Would she be able to take care of herself until he could be here to help her?

It was another line that resonated with him, another one that was going to burn in his mind and make him brood over their situation. This show was rife with them, and it had his emotions all over the place, despite his outward calm posture.

He had no way of knowing just how strongly the next chapter was going to hit him.

* * *

He was as riled up as Kousei after hearing that smart mouthed kid claim that the music Kaori made was just disastrous noise. If he’d ever heard someone say that about the music Y/N played, he was liable to sock them in the mouth. Honestly, after that comment, he’d thought that the focus was going to be on Kaori again, even with all the recent focus on Kousei’s mother. That misconception was quickly fixed, though, when the chapter began with a flashback to Kousei’s mother and how he became a pianist, further reinforced when Kousei started to play and they were given the first glimpses into his thought process, and what his new mentor–his mother’s old friend–was thinking.

Kousei’s mother’s favorite song, Kousei’s lullaby.

> _”Would she have played it like this?”_

Kousei was curled up against the wall in the darkness of a room with no one else, knees pulled up to his chest, head buried, trying to shut out the world, the woman who’d known and been close to Kousei’s mother finding him in the darkness as Kousei cried out for his mother, for someone to help him, save him. Levi tensed, going completely still beside Y/N with his gaze riveted on the scene in front of him.

> _”That son of ours is about to bid you a last farewell.”_
> 
> _”Will it reach her?”_

Levi’s jaw clenched, his teeth grinding together as he attempted to keep a lid on the emotions that were trying to rise inside him again.

> _“After I’m gone, what’s going to become of Kousei? Will he be able to earn a living?”_

There was a pressure on his chest making it impossible to breathe and a forceful pain in his throat that was pushing right at the back, like there was something stuck there that wanted to come out but _couldn’t_ , because he wouldn’t let it no matter how much it _pushed_.

> _”What a terrible mother. **There’s nothing I can leave that boy…** ”_

His breathing ground to a halt except for the barest, shaking whisper through his nose.

> _“ **I wish I could’ve stayed with him longer…** Will my treasure ever find happiness?”_

Eyes fixed on the screen, Levi suddenly felt the overwhelming need to bolt, could feel his fingers and legs twitch like he was about to without warning, but the music was reaching a crescendo, and he thought maybe, just maybe, he might be able to make it through this, even as the pain in his throat and the pressure on his chest seemed to grow more crushing, more painful, so much harder to contain.

> _”Do you think it reached my mom? The way I played my very best? Do you think it reached Mom?”_
> 
> _“You two are connected, aren’t you? Of course it reached her.”_

Kousei broke on screen, and Levi suddenly realized he wasn’t going to make it to the end of the episode. He needed to bolt now or he might shatter.

Levi tapped Y/N on the shoulder to get her to move, not daring to look at her and possible see her a crying mess already at the emotional scene. He gave a brief, “I need to take a shit,” that he managed to get out in a steady voice past the pain in his throat by some miracle, and then stood up, the brief statement her only warning to shift before his movement accidentally dumped her on the ground. He didn’t run to the bathroom, that would be too much of a tell. Instead, he got up calmly and made his way to the bathroom, not hurrying his step until he was out of sight and already halfway up the stairs.

By the time he reached the bathroom, he couldn’t hold it back any further, safely locked behind the bathroom door with the water in the sink running seconds before he finally choked on the feeling in his throat and chest. A strangled sound left him, and he leaned over the sink, trying to catch his breath even as his body tried to make him sob. His breaths hitched painfully, a slight shake in his hands before they clenched the edge of the sink, shoulders hunched and teeth grinding painfully as a soft whine escaped his rigid body.

Y/N was waiting for him. He couldn’t stay up here forever, but he at least had to get ahold of himself before he headed back down there. Out of stubborn determination, Levi tried to gulp in air and steady his breath and hands. Once he had a strong enough hold of his breathing, he cupped his hands under the water and splashed some of it onto his face to help calm himself down.

Only when he felt his composure had returned, Levi dried off his face and hands, then carefully made his way back downstairs, well-aware that the chapter wasn’t even over, and there were still several chapters left–nine, according to Y/N.

A lot could happen in nine chapters.

Levi calmly returned to his seat on the couch, Y/N giving him a quizzical, examining look before she resumed the position they’d been in before resuming the show in the exact spot he’d left–thankfully, it was after Kousei’s breakdown, so he wouldn’t have to see any of that again.

That didn’t, however, mean that he was in the clear. No, now that they had put a neat little bow on Kousei’s struggle with his mental image of his mother, they were moving on to the one who had been concerning Levi since one of the first few episodes.

> _”There’s an ever present sorrow hanging over Arima’s music…Then it’s a demon’s path he must walk. **His growth is spurred by sorrow. If he walks that path, he might have to lose someone to move forward.** ”_

Kaori was in the hospital again, and Levi felt the uneasiness and dread about the direction this show was taking grow substantially. Especially as Kousei ran inside the room and saw Kaori in the exact position his mother had been in. The way this show was starting to dig at some subconscious and deeply buried pains and fears of his that he would rather keep far from the front of his mind, but it kept plodding on, and he felt far too invested now to just leave it where it was. The curiosity and need to know what happened next would eat away at him if he asked Y/N to stop it there–plus, asking that might tip her off that something about it was upsetting him, considering at this point he couldn’t claim he was bored with it.

> _”You’re gonna be fine, right?”_
> 
> _“I can see you again, right?”_
> 
> _**“You won’t leave me like my mom did, right?”** _

At this point, the focus on Tsubaki and Kousei’s relationship was a much needed break from the reality and darker questions being asked with Kaori and Kousei right now, questions that he had asked himself from time to time regarding Y/N, questions and concerns he didn’t want to think about for his own sanity. What was happening with Tsubaki was more lighthearted, less grim, even if it was confusing and brought up even _more_ questions to ask himself. After all, Tsubaki was being faced with the question of how she felt about Kousei–the boy who had been her friend since they were little, who she was falling in love with no matter how much she tried to deny it, who she had always been beside and wanted to be beside forever.

It made him wonder. He and Y/N were friends–had been for years now. She was there for him during his darkest moments, and he’d been there for some of her scariest moments. Yes, they were friends, but…was it starting to go deeper than that? Did he feel closer to her, somehow?

Her hands had felt warm against his when they played the piano together, pressed against one another with his arms around each other so they wouldn’t get in each other’s way. His skin had tingled where she touched him when she’d taken care of and cleaned him up after that fight. He felt comfortable sitting beside her now, with her leaning against him, her head on his shoulder, despite how borderline intimate it felt.

Had she felt something similar? They hadn’t really looked at each other in these moments–they’d been avoiding looking at each other whenever something like that happened, so he had no idea. Was she aware of just how comfortable he was around her? How different that was for him? Did she have any clue how important she was becoming to him, how big a part of his life she had gradually become despite the very real distance and difference between their two worlds.

This entire time he’d been drawing similarities between them and Kousei and Kaori, when perhaps the comparison should have been with Tsubaki and Kousei.

It sure as hell might make him feel better, considering he was rather sure she had a terminal illness. After growing up in the Underground and with the experiences he had so far, fatal illnesses were something he could spot, especially when there were as many warning signs as there were for Kaori. She only seemed to be getting worse–he was pretty sure she’d been told she was going to die, even though there was no audio for the moment to confirm it. Since the first episode, Kaori had been centered on making an impression, about living on in the memories and hearts of others–she was clearly afraid of disappearing without a trace after she was gone.

Still, amid all the aching and pain, there was still flashes of hope as Kaori struggled against her illness, and more moments that made him think about the relationship between himself and the girl next to him–more damn connections between them and Kousei and Kaori, which did nothing to sooth his nerves and fears he didn’t even know he had.

> _“Why are the sounds you make so beautiful I think I’m going to cry?”_
> 
> _“That devotion you showed. Her heart had turned grey, and you gave it color.”_

Had he managed to give her what she gave him? He felt like he didn’t have anything to give, coming from the dreadful world he did. She was always the one bringing color into _his_ life, had he ever brought color to hers? Would he ever be able to? His world, his life, was ugly and dark and probably tragic. What could he offer her out of that?

> _”Did I reach him?”_
> 
> _“You don’t have the time to see me.”_
> 
> _**“It’s not about time–I want to see you.”** _

* * *

The chapter started so calmly–discussion about the next round of the competition, Kaori continuing her struggle to get better, Tsubaki finally admitting her feelings for Kousei in a way. Levi even made a quip about how Watari and Kaori really needed to stop dragging him along as the awkward extra in their group, practically rubbing it in his face even if it was unintentional. There was even another moment of resonance with something Tsubaki said to Kousei.

> _“So you won’t lose your way, so you won’t have regrets, I’ll stay by your side forever.”_

Still, he should have seen it coming. It shouldn’t have surprised him, considering he was well aware of the cruel shittiness of the world, even if Y/N wasn’t. All this time he’d spent bracing himself with the hints of just how bad Kaori’s illness was, the ominous lines of hers. All the lightheartedness and self-discovery of the past several episodes came crashing down with the emergency with Kaori as, from what Levi could see even though they clearly had far more advanced medicine that Levi knew nothing about, Kaori had some kind of close call, a brush with death, right in front of Kousei. And then with the damn cat getting hit and dying literally moments later, Kousei having to wash the blood off of his hands and breaking down in the wake of everything that was happening. He shouldn’t have been surprised, but it still ached to see it.

And there were two chapters left. Realistically, he doubted that Kaori was going to recover in two chapters after all this time. By now, he was certain that she was going to die by the end of the story.

She wasn’t even gone yet, and Kousei had already given up. Levi had seen plenty of people reach that point. No fight left, no will to move. Kousei was right back in the position he’d been in at the start, the impending loss of Kaori the final nail in his coffin, his breaking point.

> _“Why does it have to end up this way? I can’t…go on. No more…I can’t try anymore.”_

He hadn’t hit his breaking point–he hoped he never reached that point. But he was sure even he had one, even if he wasn’t sure where his limit was.

Levi blinked at the white fluttering from the sky on screen. A novel sight he couldn’t ignore or just accept. Snow, Kaori called it.

So that was what it looked like. One of the many things he’d heard about but hadn’t seen…

“Have you seen snow before, Levi? Since you live Underground,” Y/N suddenly asked from where she was curled up into his side, head turned to look at him curiously. Levi shook his head no, and she hummed. “You’ll have to show up some time in the winter so I can show you all kinds of awesome things you can do when it snows. It’s cold, but it’s fun. And everything looks so clean and pure…my favorite things are the trees encapsulated in ice,” she said with a wistful sigh, eventually quieting down as the scene on the screen continued to develop.

Maybe one day. But he would have to come through not only when it was winter, but on a day that there was snow, and he had no control over when he blipped over into her world.

Blipped, blip…her word for when Levi flickered into and out of her world. Clearly, it had caught on even in his mind.

> _**“The people I care about keep leaving me…I’m going to be left all alone.”** _

Inwardly, Levi felt himself flinch, and that desire to bolt was trying to rear its head again, the desire for her to shut it off and spare him these comments that kept digging into the darker corners of himself, the weakness he kept hidden away for no one to see.

> _**“But you have me.** But you have me.”_

For the first time, Levi felt Y/N’s hand give his little squeeze on his knee as Kaori repeated her sentiment to Kousei.

Perhaps the feelings were mutual. Maybe he wasn’t the only one drowning in emotions on the inside and drawing parallels while they watched this show, if she was giving him a little squeeze after those words. After he registered that he had felt it, and he hadn’t imagined it, he gave her shoulder a small squeeze in return.

> _“I’m going to struggle as hard as I can. Struggle, struggle, struggle, like there’s no tomorrow.”_
> 
> _**“You gave me this desire to cling to the time that I spent with you.** Aren’t you going to struggle to? We’re so good at struggling.”_

Hell if that wasn’t the story of his life so far, right there.

Collectively, the two of them held their breath, watching as, after Kousei declared how useless it was for him to even try to play in the state he was in right now, Kaori got to her feet on her own, and the sound of the violin softly flickered towards them from the screen. It was like the music was from a dream, her imaginary violin ethereal, Kaori lit up by a flurry of snow as she played to a crescendo and smiled at Kousei.

> _“See, miracles can happen just like that.”_

Shaking, legs trembling, sweating, collapsed into Kousei’s arms with a breathless laugh, clinging to him like a source of comfort. It wasn’t her reciting of the things she knew about Kousei, or what she wished she knew, that drew a response from him, but her heartfelt pleas with Kousei as he held her in her arms.

> _**“I’m scared. I’m scared! Don’t leave me all alone!”** _

That was why it was familiar. That was how Y/N had held him when…

And perhaps the reason he’d lashed out when he’d found out about how fleeting this world was for him had been because…

Levi shifted, and it was only when Y/N started to pull away did he realize he’d been shifting to get up and walk away, to bolt. When she fixed him with that questioning look again, not-yet-spilled tears in her eyes from the emotion of the scene, her hand still fisted in his shirt, it brought him back to what was happening in the present, and he shook his head as if to dismiss the movement as he sat back down, relieved when the scene changed again.

Considering it was going to the competition _and_ Kaori’s surgery at the same time, he doubted he was going to get much of a reprieve before the emotions hit again. Kousei was still a mess, though it was a miracle he’d at least shown up to the competition, but even watching him was worrisome, wondering if he was going to break at the piano again after all this progress he’d made throughout the show, everyone watching in concern in the show and on the couch.

> _“I made you remember something you don’t want to remember…”_
> 
> _“I won’t forget, even if I die…”_
> 
> _“You can just forget about it all, like you’ve pressed the reset button…”_
> 
> _“ **I guess maybe we never should’ve met, huh?”**_

Levi had to close his eyes for a moment after that one, sucking in a sharp breath. It was like it had come right out of his denial of their entire situation, how angry he’d been, the pain it had caused, how for a few moments, he’d felt like it would have been better if he could forget it all, if they had never met, because then he wouldn’t know about what he could never have. His heart ached painfully, the words reverberating not in his mind, but in his bones as the pain in his throat already seemed to be returning.

He opened his eyes, and on screen, Kousei started to break down again, face in his hands, on the brink of tears seated at the piano, on stage in front of everyone once again.

Tsubaki sneezed, and after a few moments of reflecting, after realizing how many people he knew were there…Kousei finally began to play, the notes reverberating deep inside his chest in a full, resonating sound. Something about it made him nostalgic, but also so…it was so…

> _“Bursting with such mournful color.”_

The chapter suddenly came to an end mid performance, which startled Levi–especially when Y/N darted forward so suddenly to grab the remote and quickly jump to the next one, immediately snapping back into his side, clutching to his clothes like her life depended on it, curled into a ball as he realized for the first time that tissue box was suddenly right in front of her, easily accessible.

The last episode.

Considering the set-up, neither of them were going to get through this last part unscathed emotionally.

It started from the beginning of the piece this time, the commentary being made by the onlookers and Kousei different this time, centered entirely on Kousei after the very beginning. Levi and Y/N were both enraptured by the performance though, holding to one another on the couch with gazes fixed forward, completely still, even their breathing slight as they paid full attention to every word, and let the music pull them in deeper into the emotional symphony Kousei was creating with just the piano.

> _“I’m so scared…Somebody…”_
> 
> _“But you have me.”_
> 
> _“I’m not alone. From the moment that we meet someone else, none of us can ever be alone. We’re all connected.”_

Levi’s grip tightened slightly on Y/N’s shoulder again, and he felt her grip tighten in return.

> _“Don’t leave me all alone.”_
> 
> _“Dummy, you have me.”_
> 
> _“Inside me…you exist.”_

Y/N nuzzled into his side like a cat, and he thought he felt his shirt starting to get damp. He ignored it, keeping his grip on her firm and steady, staying still beneath her as he stared stalwartly at the screen, even as the emotions were starting to stir violently around inside him.

> _”No way am I going to leave you all alone. Reach her. Reach her. Reach her. Reach her.”_

The scenery changed entirely, like Kousei was playing in the sky amid a shower of colors, floating around like leaves that autumn day when he and Y/N had jumped into the piles and sent them scattering into the air. Kaori’s whispered ‘Thank you’ as Kousei carried her back down the stairs sent a shiver down his spine, especially when Kousei of the present reacted, and turned his head to see Kaori materializing beside him, violin in hand.

Beside him, there was suddenly a whine from Y/N, and a rather large sniffle, as well as that damp feeling on his clothes starting to spread. She trembled slightly beneath his arm and hand, and he realized she was starting to cry rather _heavily_ , her face partially buried in his side.

The music was jarring, disorienting, suddenly intense and tragic as Kousei closed his eyes, barely holding back tears.

Oh.

Oh, _shit_.

And there it was.

Kaori’s rich violin playing joined into Kousei’s suddenly mournful and tragic playing, and Levi realized that they were witnessing the last time the two would get to play together. It couldn’t happen again in body, but at least in spirit. Words weren’t needed for this moment. Nothing was said between the characters on the screen, and not a word was spoken between Levi and Y/N. She was continuing to cry into his side, with Levi starting to semi-awkwardly rub her shoulder to try and comfort her even as his own heart seemed to be pounding painfully at the sight in front of him, every note piercing him deeper than he thought possible with the raw emotion behind and pure weight of this single moment. All there was at this moment in time, was him, Y/N, and the music being created on the stage in front of them between Kaori and Kousei, one last time.

A sob broke past Y/N’s control as the colorful day turned into a rich night, and Kaori stopped playing. Levi held his breath, watching as transfixed on the scene as Kousei was transfixed on Kaori, the music softening for the briefest moment before it started to turn slow, mournful, and tragic again.

> _”Wait…please don’t go!”_

As Kousei started to beg Kaori to do all of these things with him again, good and bad, Levi felt the pressure on his chest return, the burn in his eyes and the clench in his jaw, the pain in his throat. Memories of his own were flickering before his eyes in place of what Kousei begged of Kaori.

A small hand offering a still-warm roll. A splash of cool water to the face with shrieks and giggles filling the air. The security of being able to lean comfortably against a warm back with the sun shining down from above, hands gripping his legs and his arms wrapped around the girl who carried him home on her back. The cool taste of ice cream as they leaned against the brick store. A gentle hand rubbing soft circles on his back as he slipped in and out of lucid thought in his feverish state. The sound of hope amid darkness that they managed to create together despite his crude piano playing. Her hand even now clenched tightly in his shirt seeking comfort, like when he’d led her home in the dark through the desert.

His hand was stretched out before him, pulled along by the girl that suddenly disappeared when he closed his eyes. He tried to reach a little further, as if his fingertips could press past some veil between his world and hers, so he could reach her even for another moment. The warmth and the softness of the comfort she wrapped him in evaporated into smoke between his fingers, disappearing in translucent curls, leaving him with nothing to hold, the weight of her presence suddenly disappearing.

What if one day he didn’t come back?

What if one day it all just…ended? Without any warning? The only sign that he would never return the passage of time and gradual loss of hope?

> _**“Don’t go, don’t go, please don’t go, please don’t leave me behind!”** _

Y/N was sobbing openly into his side now, but she didn’t move to stop the show–she kept watching it. Levi was unaware of the fact that his hand was shaking against her shoulder, all of his effort on keeping the emotions bottled inside him as he watched Kaori disappear before Kousei’s eyes in a flurry of petals, swept away by an indifferent wind.

The rest of the last chapter seemed to pass by in a blur, Levi spending most of that time trying to work his way down from the emotions that scene had stirred up in him, glancing over at Y/N to see a collection of tissues around her while her gaze remained fixed forward, still a blubbering mess over the events that were unfolding on screen. Shards of Kaori’s letter made it through to Levi, certain fragments sticking with him in the moment, others slowly settling in likely to make an impact on him later.

> _“I want Kousei to play the piano for me!”_

He understood that sentiment. He loved listening to Y/N play for him, it was one of the many reasons why he brought it up so often. Sure, it was nice she was trying to teach him to play, but the true moment of enjoyment for him was when she played for him.

> _“Isn’t it funny how the most unforgettable scenes can be so trivial?”_
> 
> _**“None of it was trivial.”** _

No, none of it was. From playing card games in her room to playing tag on the playground, or eating frozen treats on the steps while they played simple games with their hands. Every little moment was one Levi kept stored away, a secret trove of memories just for him and her, something bright and…something that the Underground couldn’t corrupt, because it couldn’t reach or touch this world or the girl at his side.

> _“Was I able to live inside your heart? Do you think you’ll remember me at least a little? You better not hit reset. **Don’t forget me, okay? That’s a promise, okay?** I’m glad it’s you, after all.”_

Like Y/N said, just because the moments were fleeting, didn’t mean they didn’t matter. Even if they stopped one day, for whatever reason…at least he would have everything that had come before, the memories, the moments that nothing could take away. He didn’t think she would want him to try and forget, anyway. And a part of him wouldn’t want her to forget him, either. Unlike everything else in his life so far, he wanted this good thing to last, one way or another.

> _**“Will I reach you? I hope I can reach you.”** _

This time, when his mind procured the image of his hand outstretched in front of him, trying to catch the disappearing back of the girl in front of him, fingers finding nothing but air, he let his hand squeeze slightly against Y/N’s shoulder once more, reminding himself she was right here in his arms right now, and not to take that for granted. Maybe sometimes she’d be out of reach, but right now, she was right here. She wasn’t always out of reach. He’d just have to make each moment he was here count for something.

Thankfully, she already seemed pretty good at making that happen, so he felt like he wouldn’t have to worry about it too much. She was always taking him by the hand to have him run with her wherever she wanted to go and explore, and so far, she hadn’t made him regret following her on her little adventures.

She made his life colorful.

_“Thank you for being my friend, Levi.”_

> **_“I’m the one who should be thanking you.”_ **

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> They did not binge this in one day. The first round, for sure they did, but it was a little broken up in spurts. For the sake of brevity, considering this was already going to be a long chapter, I cut out all the flickering back and forth and just focused on their Movie Nights and them watching the show.
> 
> This whole chapter is like one big lead up to the next chapter, funnily enough. XD
> 
> Also got to listen to “Constellation” by Far Out feat. Karra on repeat writing this. It felt so fitting!


	10. Constellations

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Yes, I named this chapter after the song I’ve been listening to on repeat for two weeks for where this series is right now. Constellation by Far Out feat. Karra.
> 
> Also this picks up DIRECTLY after the previous chapter.

**_*Reader’s POV*_ **

After the show was over, Levi was…restless. He’d practically sprung up from the couch once the final credits started playing, and for a moment you thought he was going to claim he was sneaking away to the bathroom again. He didn’t claim anything, actually–instead he started climbing the stairs, looking agitated with a slight scowl on his face. If you hadn’t been paying attention to him as well during the show, you might have been completely lost about what was causing such a foul mood from him.

Not wanting to lose sight of him, you quickly scrambled up from the couch to hurry after him as he prowled up the stairs.

“Who the hell wants to watch something depressing like that?” he asked, sounding like a bona-fide sulking teenager as he headed straight for your room.

Well, that didn’t sound right. If he hadn’t liked the show, he wouldn’t have sat through the whole thing, surely? So he couldn’t have hated it. Maybe just some of the themes made him uncomfortable? Something about it had upset him, _clearly_.

“Levi, are you all right?” you asked in concern as you followed him inside your room, shutting the door behind you.

“I’m fine,” he snapped back, as if it should be obvious. The gruff edge to his voice suggested otherwise.

That was a blatant lie. His attitude was a clear indicator that everything wasn’t fine, and yet, he was trying to bottle up whatever was bothering him. He did that a lot, from what you could tell–put up a front, pretended nothing fazed him, hid when something was bothering him, buried his emotions and kept them from rising to the surface. Something about the show downstairs had really bothered him. You didn’t know what, and you didn’t think he would tell you, but you doubted keeping it buried was going to help.

Who knew what else he was trying to shove into hiding, what else he was suppressing.

And that front of his–how many times had he said he was fine, it was nothing, when whatever _it_ was, was clearly _something_. You’d seen him starving, roughed up, attacked, and even caught flashes of emotional distress on his face every now and then. You knew his life wasn’t an easy one, and that it was actually pretty scary. You _knew_ , so why did he feel like he had to put up this front that everything was fine and nothing could faze him when he was with you? Did he feel like it was protecting you in some way?

You didn’t want him putting up that front around you–didn’t want him to feel like he needed to.

But how could you tell him, how could you /show/ him he didn’t have to put up that act with you, in a way that would make him listen and understand?

* * *

**_*Levi’s POV*_ **

Still sulking from all of the thoughts and emotions that damn show had stirred up inside him while he was watching, Levi didn’t initially notice when she was approaching him. Normally he would berate himself for letting his guard down, even around her, but he was caught off guard when instead of hearing any kind of vocal answer to his fuming, he simply felt her hand rest gently on his shoulder.

His attention pulled from the dark places his mind kept trying to lead him, Levi turned to look at her, a question on his eyes and about to fall from his lips when he suddenly realized how _close_ she was, directly in front of him and moving closer. Instinctively, Levi took a few steps back before his legs hit the edge of the bed and he stopped, glancing behind him to confirm that’s what he’d hit. When he looked back at Y/N, she hadn’t stopped moving closer to him, and he found himself leaning back until he was sitting on the edge of the bed, her hands moving to his shoulders.

His heart was pounding in his chest, face showing clear confusion at the concentrated look that she was displaying despite her odd actions. Her hands started to move methodically over his arms and was coming towards his chest, and he had to speak up. “What are you–”

“I want to show you something…but…you’re gonna have to trust me and let me do it, okay?” she said, a suspicious blush coloring her cheeks. What was she trying to _show him_? It wasn’t anything untoward, was it? His mental image of her was a bit too innocent for that to be a feasible thing for her to be doing right now in his mind. Besides, if it was _that_ , he was pretty sure she would have already–

Her slowly moving touch suddenly stopped in one of the places Levi kept a knife hidden up his sleeve, and her hand dropped to slide under his sleeve and wiggle the knife out of its hidden holster.

“Hey, leave that alone–” he started to say sharply, the thought of her and knives not mixing well in his mind, or the thought of her disarming him.

Her other hand came to rest on his chest to calm him down, pausing in taking the knife away but not releasing her grip on it. “It’s all right. Just trust me and let me do this, okay?” she reassured him again in that same soft tone of voice.

But why take the knife? What did she want it for?

As he reluctantly allowed her to take the knife from him, he watched as she dropped it over the side of the bed, out of either of their reach. He gave her a disapproving look, still not sure what she was going for here as her hands resumed the wander they’d been doing before she’d found that hidden knife.

“It’s fine–it’ll be right back where it belongs when you go back, anyway, right?” she said pointedly. He never should have mentioned that detail of what happened when he blipped back to his world if this kind of mischievousness was going to be the result. “Just trust me.”

There it was again–her soft spoken plea that he trust her, like she was trying to coax a frightened cat out of a corner she couldn’t fit in or reach it from. Why? What was her sudden fascination with…

She found the more obvious knife at his waist and undid it as well, doing the same with that knife as she had with the first, putting it out of reach. A tightness seemed to be welling up in his chest, and he couldn’t quite figure out why yet. He felt…vulnerable and exposed. And that could be a death sentence in the Underground. Maybe that was it.

Her hands continued to wander lower, passing his waist and starting a gentle and slow search down his legs. The pounding in his heart became much louder and intense as he finally realized at least what her more immediate intentions were. He still didn’t understand _why_ , but he knew she was trying to disarm him, to get rid of the weapons he was keeping hidden on his person.

It was terrifying, being so suddenly faced with the prospect of being without a weapon. Ever since meeting Kenny, he had _never_ been without a weapon, had _never_ been _willingly_ disarmed. The thought was panic inducing, and as she reached for the last hidden weapon he had on him at the moment, his hand suddenly shot out to stop her, closing tightly around her wrist and holding her arm firmly where it was, refusing her movement a millimeter further.

He had to lean forward to do it, and when she looked up to see why he’d stopped her, her face was close enough to his he could feel her warm breaths against his cheek. No doubt she was close enough to feel his shallower breaths, as if the for-once wide-eyed look he gave her, the look in his eyes and the slight tremble in his grip wasn’t enough of a sign for what this made him feel at the moment. It was the hardest he’d ever held onto her…well, consciously.

* * *

**_*Reader’s POV*_ **

What Levi wasn’t aware of was the fact that the look in his eyes and the way he was holding onto you so tightly reminded you of the day the two of you were preteens in the middle of that forest. Well, it wasn’t _nearly_ as tight of a grip as it had been that day, considering he wasn’t drawing blood. It was more a shadow of the grip that day, but it was still strong enough to remind you of it.

You covered his hand with the one he wasn’t currently keeping from removing his last hidden weapon, giving his hand a small squeeze to try and give him some reassurance.

“It’s all right. _Trust_ me, you’re _safe_ ,” you said softly, staying calm and patient, waiting for _him_ to show that he would let you before you continued any further. “You’re okay.”

What you were trying to do, you weren’t trying to be mean, or to force him into anything. It wasn’t about that. What you were trying to do was about trust and safety, about vulnerability. You wanted him to feel and know that he could trust you, _really_ trust you, enough that he could let his guard down when he was around you. You wanted him to know it was okay to be vulnerable, _unarmed_ in all senses of the word when he was around you. He didn’t have to constantly be on guard against people that were out to get him when he was with you. He was safe when he was here with you, and you wanted him to know that, that he wouldn’t be made to regret it whenever he let his guard down around you.

Your mind could have very easily gone to other things with how close you two were, the heat and the feel of him underneath you, but you were too focused on helping him feel _safe_ with you that it didn’t even occur to you, not at the current moment.

A few moments of tension passed between the two of you where you both held your positions, before you carefully and slowly attempted to move your hand closer to the place you’d found this last knife, somewhere around his ankle, probably tucked into his boot. His grip tightened on your wrist again, and you paused, still holding eye contact with him.

“It’s okay,” you told him softly, the thumb of your other hand, the one resting atop his, gently brushing along the back of his hand. “Just let me do this. Trust me, okay?” you murmured softly to him.

This one you weren’t going to drop over the edge. It was the last one, and with how tightly he was clinging to it, you knew better than to rip it from him. You were going to have to be slow and mindful with this one.

Levi hesitated, and you felt the grip on your wrist relax marginally. Encouraged, you carefully pressed a little further, hearing his breathing growing shallow, signifying just how scared this was actually making him. If his hand wasn’t gripping so tightly to yours, it would probably be shaking.

Carefully, you reached for the last knife, pulling it slowly out of its holster, but making sure it was in constant contact with him, even if it was slight. Up along his leg before you angled it so that it was resting against his wrist. Levi’s eyes started to cloud with confusion again, which meant he was a little less resistant to what you were doing, hesitantly following your lead as he tried to figure out what you were doing, what this was all for.

As gently as you could, you pressed the handle into his palm, his fingers instinctively tightening around it instead of your wrist as you pushed him back onto the bed. Despite his confusion, his cheeks were tinged the slightest shade of pink, which caused you to blush in turn as you realized what he must be thinking given their current position. Trying to push those thoughts out of your mind again, you covered his hand with your own, the one holding that knife still, so his palm was on one side of the handle, yours was on the other.

You let him sit like that for a few moments, murmuring out the occasional _it’s okay_ , _you’re safe_ , _you’re all right_ , your other hand resting carefully on his other shoulder. He was watching your every move, listening intently to the words you were saying even though it was the same thing over and over, your voice soft and gentle, meant to be soothing and reassuring.

After a few moments when he started to relax again, his grip slackening slightly on the last knife, you started to carefully loosen his fingers from around the knife. He tensed slightly as you started to try and take it again, holding his gaze and picking up with the soothing words again, the same mantra, the same tone. You stayed patient, stopping when the panic started to show in his wide eyes, continuing when he seemed more hesitant and more likely to give way to what you were trying to do. He never entirely relaxed, but his grip was slowly slackening on the last knife, until at long last you were able to slowly pry it out of his hand, pushing it slightly off to the side.

You could see his fingers twitch, or maybe they were shaking and it was just hard to tell when the back of his hand was lying against the bed. He wanted to grab at the knife, you could tell as much. That was why it was right there and you hadn’t pushed it out of the way yet. At the same time, you made sure your arm was in constant contact with his now empty hand, giving him a continual physical touch with you besides the obvious, giving him something to hold to besides the knife.

Slowly, you let your fingertips push the knife further and further away, inch by painful inch, until the knife fell over the edge with a soft _thwump_ onto the carpet that made Levi flinch slightly beneath you. With Levi finally disarmed in the physical sense of the word, you let him simply…sit there and adjust to the feeling, still holding his gaze, your hand retreating to hold his now that the knife had fallen over the edge and was out of reach with the others. His eyes were wide and unsure, and he squirmed uncomfortably underneath you, but neither of you spoke. The silence stretched on and on between the two of you, and you simply…waited.

* * *

**_*Levi’s POV*_ **

For the first time in a long time, he felt completely and utterly exposed. There was nothing to protect himself if something went wrong, no weapon within reach. His heart was pounding in his chest and he felt jumpy, the strongest desire crashing over him to leap up and grab the blades down below just so he could hold them and have that reassurance that they were there if he needed them.

Now that she’d stripped him of his weapons, he expected Y/N to say something, _anything_ , just something that would give him some idea of what she was hoping to achieve. Instead, she just gazed down at him, watching him closely with a softness in her gaze, her hand slowly twining into his and holding tightly to his trembling fingers, giving him something to hold to in place of the knife she’d stripped from him.

But why? Why do all this? Why strip him of his only means of defense if something went wrong?

The longer he stared up at her and tried to figure out what was going on, the less he thought about the knives on the floor, and the more he focused on her instead. Slowly, he started to relax beneath her, his breathing evening out and his hand tightening slightly around hers, a small comfort in place of not having his knives. The irrational fear of something terrible happening the moment he didn’t have his knives on him started to trickle away the longer they simply…sat there. The silence wasn’t a fearful and unknowable abyss, but grew gradually comfortable, nothing terrible happening, no sudden explosion or door being kicked inward with bad guys appearing from the shadows. Nothing bad happened when she disarmed him, just like she’d promised. It had been a silly little fear of his, but having them on him made him feel safe and reassured, like a safety net. Now that she had stripped him of those safety nets, all he had to hold onto, was…

As he reached a middle ground where his breathing evened out and he was partially relaxed despite the instincts drilled into him by Kenny keeping part of him tense and on edge wanting to grab a weapon, she suddenly smiled at him. It was warm, and for some reason proud and reassuring, like he’d done something grand and awe inspiring, even though all he’d done was lay there and let her take away his weapons.

“See?” she said quietly, her arms shifting to his sides. He still wasn’t sure about this proximity thing, but he’d been doing what she asked and trusting her with whatever this was, following her lead. “It’s alright…you’re alright. It’s okay to be vulnerable sometimes.”

She spoke in the softest murmur, and while Levi’s eyebrows furrowed in confusion, she wrapped her arms carefully around him and leaned down to pillow her head on his chest in a hug as tender as her movements and voice had been during this entire experiment.

“It’s okay…it’s alright…trust me…”

There was the mantra again. She was still saying it, even though she’d already stripped the knives away. Why, though, if she’d already taken care of the knives? Did she know part of him still wanted to reach out and grab them to hold onto again?

But the more he heard her say it, especially now, in this position while he felt so exposed and vulnerable, with the silence all around them and after the fresh assault of emotions that damn show had brought on…

Something was bubbling up inside him, something strong and alarming, something _new_ that scared him. Maybe it wasn’t new, but rather something that had been buried for so long and something he hadn’t felt so strongly since that he almost didn’t recognize it.

Whatever it was, it wasn’t something he wanted to feel, it wasn’t something he wanted to confront when he wasn’t alone. He attempted to get a hold of himself again, to shove the surfacing emotions back down and far away from the surface, bury them all over again where they couldn’t emerge when he wasn’t ready for them.

The arms around his chest tightened, Y/N’s face buried a little deeper into his chest as she said it again.

“It’s okay. You’re all right. Trust me.”

Levi’s eyes widened, lips parting slightly as he finally realized this had nothing to do with the knives. Not really. The knives were merely a front. This was about something intangible and far scarier.

This was about letting her in. Letting her see him unfiltered and without his guard up. About trusting her enough that he let her see him when he was vulnerable.

Levi’s breath caught, and he immediately resisted the terrifying thought, trying to retreat rapidly on an emotional front, body tensing like he was about to push her off him and try to leave by choice for once.

As he tensed, her grip on him shifted once again, her face fully buried in his chest. Maybe it was the way he had tensed in her embrace, or maybe it was the way she was holding him just so, but his mind flashed to the tenderness she’d shown him in the past. That first hug she’d given him after Kenny left, how warm and comforting it had been, and even though he’d resisted it at first because it wasn’t something he was used to, after he trusted her and let her hug him, it helped him feel…a little more secure, and a little more safe, despite what had just happened.

Even further back, when they’d first met…he’d been starving, filthy, near death–considering Kenny hadn’t even been sure Levi was alive when he first saw him, he was certain he’d looked like he was already a corpse. He’d been ready to give up and die when he appeared in her world for the first time. And yet, never once did she make fun of or ever bring up his past vulnerability, his past weakness. She’d never ridiculed it, never drug it up at moments when she could have to make a point. She’d simply wrapped him in warmth and care and helped him feel better in so many different ways. She’d helped him feel safe and cared for in his darkest moments, made him feel clean and worthwhile.

And _that_ day. She’d held him without a word of complaint about the pain of his grip, even when he drew blood. He’d glimpsed the healing marks later, and had been consumed by guilt that he’d hurt her, but she’d never said a word about it or shown any sign that she held it against him. After what happened, she didn’t shun him or point out his weakness, or think less of him for finding himself unable to fight back–she’d stayed with him despite her own fear, and she’d given him the strength and resolve to fight back.

She had already seen him at his worst, and never once had she thought less of him for it. Never had she brought up these moments of weakness that he’d show, not during times when he was helpless, not to point out the chinks in his armor, not even when they were having more serious or personal moments. Even now, she wasn’t telling him to be vulnerable with her because he had been vulnerable around her in the past in situations out of his control. Now, she was asking him to _choose_ to be vulnerable around her.

She was asking him to choose to let her in, to choose to trust her that much to feel safe around her. Safe enough he didn’t need to be armed, didn’t need to be guarded. She wanted him to know he could feel that way around her without having to worry about some kind of consequence for being vulnerable. This wasn’t the Underground. Letting down his guard around her wasn’t going to result in death or some kind of emotional scarring.

He already knew from experience that she wouldn’t make him regret it, that she wouldn’t betray his trust if he chose to give it to her, because after all this time, she hadn’t betrayed the vulnerability she’d already seen from him on numerous occasions.

This was still very different, though–choosing to let her see things that he usually tried to keep hidden from her, letting her in behind his guard because he wanted to, not because of circumstance. Did he really want to? Normally he kept people at a distance because he didn’t want to lose anyone else. And arguably, she was the one with the highest risk of being lost to him, considering they didn’t know how this worked, or if it would some day stop.

But that didn’t mean these moments meant nothing.

That was the one lesson he’d been learning the hard way, a lesson that was making him cling all the harder to her.

As all of this went through his mind, Levi’s gaze remained fixed upwards on the ceiling, lips parted slightly like he was about to speak, one arm lying forgotten on the bed while the other was twined with hers, her other arm hugging him tightly to her, his eyes half lidded and her head buried in his chest. Slowly, as he came to terms with the reality of his vulnerability, and how much of it she had already seen, Levi finally started to relax, even if it was gradually. That stoic, guarded expression started to soften and crumble, and as he relaxed, Y/N finally peeked up at him, catching a glimpse of his face as those emotions started to bubble up unrestrained. Their eyes met for a few heartbeats, and the look in her eyes shifted as she saw he was about to tip over some kind of edge. She moved up, wrapping both arms around him and pulling him to her in a protective kind of embrace, his head cradled gently into her chest as if she was shielding him from the eyes of the world. He was caught off guard by the sudden shift for a few seconds, before he recognized the protective and shielding position she’d put herself in.

His arms tentatively wrapped around her in turn, and he let his head lean into her as she had done to him so many times before. For the first time in _so long_ , he felt truly and thoroughly safe and protected in her arms, like nothing could touch him so long as he was here in this very spot.

He hadn’t felt this way since his mother died.

His breath hitched, eyes squeezed shut as he started to suck in shuddering breaths, his shoulders trembling against her as arms tightened their grip from the unsure and tentative hug of a few moments ago to something growing in strength. His hands clutched at the shirt on her back, and that pressure in his chest and pain in his throat returned as he still held back the unbridled emotion that was rising rapidly inside him.

It was all a jumbled mess, honestly. He’d been suppressing what he felt for the sake of survival so long, he couldn’t even distinguish one emotion from the other, or where the emotions originated. He just knew they roiled inside him like an unhindered storm–anger and the pain of loss, abandonment, fear and agony, trauma and desperation, feelings of injustice and a slowly jaded view of the world, a sense of betrayal, worthlessness, not being good enough, powerlessness, a loss of innocence. It was all coming up at once, and even though he didn’t think he was ready to cry in front of her, he _was_ allowing himself to start to feel it, and to let her get a peek of what he was keeping bottled deep inside. Even if it was in the shelter of her arms and couldn’t see his face, she could still feel him shuddering violently in her arms, could hear him sucking in unsteady breaths that gave away how he was at the brink of a harsh cry but wouldn’t let himself fall over the edge.

No, he didn’t dip over the edge. The dam didn’t break, not yet, he wasn’t ready for that yet. But he did allow himself to be disarmed, to be held, to show her the cracks in the armor he’d tried to hide before to give her a sense of an unshaking presence at her side.

But he’d been mistaken. She’d never asked for some kind of guardian, or a knight in shining armor. She’d just wanted him, as he was, cracks and all.

He would trust her more. He would let her see more of this side of himself. Especially because he knew now that it was safe to do so, and that she wouldn’t make him regret it. Whatever he showed her, would stay between the two of them. And it would help him get some of this crushing weight off of his chest.

Eventually. Right now, he just let himself feel and be held, shielded from the world–both of their worlds–by her embrace.

* * *

**_(Two Weeks Later)_ **

“I’m bored.”

Levi turned slightly to look at Y/N, his back against the end of her bed with his legs stretched out in front of him. She was lying upside down on her bed, her head dangling over the edge a few inches from his shoulder while he flipped through a booklet _she_ had given him because _she_ wanted to know what he thought about her plans to go to some science college after she finished high school to continue her education.

“You’re the one with all the great ideas. Come up with something,” he said flatly.

Why was he even looking at this? It made no sense to him–his world wasn’t this advanced, and most of the stuff in her world, he just had to roll with it and accept that’s what it was and try not to think too hard about the details, because they would be lost on him. Like that rounded box thing that played music through her room while they were together, filling their companionable silence with something to listen to at least.

He preferred it more when she was playing the piano, but at least he was hearing more music from her world he could try to request she play. Or that he learn how to play, if he liked it enough.

Levi lightly smacked her in the face with the now-closed booklet. “If you want to do it, do it. Don’t let someone else decide.”

She sighed, taking the booklet from him. “It’s going to be really intense. I’m not sure if I’m cut out for it,” she muttered, flipping through the pages halfheartedly. “Mom says I could probably get into one of the really good schools if I tried hard enough. Something like MIT–which means nothing to you, yeah, sorry, I forget,” she grumbled, flipping around on the bed so she was sitting up properly and the blood wasn’t rushing to her head anymore.

Outside, a loud rumble and crack rent the air, and Levi jumped, head whipping around and looking for the danger as a curse left him. Y/N gasped, but it wasn’t the scared kind of gasp–it was excited.

“It’s raining?” she asked excitedly, dropping the booklet and hurrying over to the window so she could pull back the curtain. It was dark outside, but there was water on the window and pattering against it, a sound that became more audible when she turned down the music. “Levi, have you seen rain before?”

“What do you think?” he grumbled, getting to his feet as he sensed the energy coming off her in waves. That feeling usually came before she dragged him somewhere to try something new.

“I know what we’re going to do,” she said excitedly, grabbing his arm and racing down the stairs.

“What was that sound?”

“Thunder–don’t worry, thunder doesn’t do anything but sound scary. It’s the lightning you have to worry about, but even then, the odds of being struck by lightning is like, a million to one a year. Come _on_ this is gonna be fun!”

He wasn’t sure after that comment about being struck by lightning, but it wasn’t like she was going to give him much of an option. Without any hesitation, she threw open the front door and drug him outside, the screen door slamming behind them as they stepped off the shelter of the porch and were almost immediately bombarded with a torrent of rain falling from the sky. It was quickly cutting through his clothes and soaking them to the point they were going to hang off his frame, the same as Y/N, but she hardly seemed to care, delving deeper into the weather, straight into the street after letting go of his arm.

Her arms were flung wide, head angled up and eyes closed against the rain that showered down on her with a wild laugh, doing a slow turn. The water was cool, but the weather itself was warm enough that it wasn’t chilling–not yet, anyway.

Attempting to see what she saw when all he could focus on was how drenched he was getting and how much _water_ was everywhere, Levi looked up at the night sky, squinting his eyes against the rain falling down on his face. Looking up, he couldn’t see the stars–just darkness, and in its place were the raindrops, falling so rapidly from above that it looked like water was appearing from the nothingness above them to shower upon the earth, falling like stars in what seemed like slow motion, flashing in and out of view as it fell past the beams of light from the streetlamps and the light of homes.

He had to turn his head back down and brush the water off his face, pushing wet strands of hair out of the way as well as he looked over at Y/N, who had put her arms over her head and was doing a twirl, water flying off her jacket and splashing up in the air from the street where her feet spun her, hair flying around her face with her momentum and throwing more water around her as she giggled, not a care in the world.

Her eyes caught his, the brightest grin on her face as she reached out for his hand again.

“Dance with me!” she insisted, pulling him surprisingly close as water splashed into the air from their footsteps, the hand linked with his held up to the side while the other reached for his shoulder.

His mind blanked for a moment, a thousand questions and reasons not to, including that he didn’t know how, flashing through his mind. What he came up with was a simple, “There’s no music.”

She just laughed. “Like we need it,” she said as if it was obvious, her hand pulling him along in a purely improvised dance that had no real direction, no music. The rain didn’t feel so cold anymore–if anything, it felt cooling, refreshing, soothing against his skin, even if he occasionally had to blink it away. For the most part they simply twirled in aimless circles. Occasionally she would lift his arm and spin under it, flashing him another wide grin along the way to show how much she was enjoying this impulsive escapade. Other times she would lean into him, looking up at the rain falling from the sky in wonder, as if she hadn’t seen it a million times before, her eyes dreamy and far away.

“They’re like stars falling to the earth when it’s dark, don’t you think?” she asked, stretching out with the hand that had been on his shoulder to let some of the droplets fall onto her palm. “It’s like being in a whole ‘nother world for a few seconds.”

Levi wasn’t looking at the rain anymore–he was looking at her, at the shine in her eyes, the glisten of the rain curling down her skin, clothes soaked all the way through like his, hair sticking in random curls along the edges of her face. She was…gorgeous. Brighter than any star he’d find staring up at the sky.

And she was freezing. She might not notice yet, but she was trembling in his arms, the slightest hint of blue coloring her lips. As beautiful and awe inspiring as it was for her, it was time to head inside.

Levi tugged at her arm. “Time to go inside–you’re freezing,” he told her, pulling her closer to the house and closer to him in turn, an arm around her shoulders while her hand clung to the soaked fabric of his sleeve, both of them hurrying towards the door.

For a split second, a light flashed through the sky, spider-webbing across the darkness like a fracture in glass in brilliant white and blue light, and a crack of thunder made Y/N squeal in exhilaration and run faster up to the house.

The door slammed shut behind them once more, both of them now feeling the chill of their soaked clothes now that they were out of the rain, Levi taking in how quickly the carpet was turning colors while they dripped all over the place. After he grumbled something unintelligible about water everywhere, Y/N simply laughed, ruffling his sopping wet hair without warning and darting away before he could grab her.

“It’ll dry–come on, dry clothes and towels in the bathroom for you!” she promised, hurrying up the stairs and leaving a trail of wet carpet along the way as she disappeared.

For a moment, Levi smiled to himself in the quiet to see her so happy, even with the brief water mess.


End file.
